


Anesthesia

by LuckyFeedback



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Post-Game: Resident Evil 0, Romance, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:02:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28781688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyFeedback/pseuds/LuckyFeedback
Summary: Second chances are curious things: afforded to few, and used wisely by fewer still.What will you do with yours?
Relationships: Rebecca Chambers/Billy Coen
Comments: 48
Kudos: 27





	1. Baltimore

**Author's Note:**

> (( Giving one of my favorite 'ships some much-needed love. ❤ This fic is a continuation of the events of “Creep”, the stand-alone B/R chapter from my story Call & Respond. It will make more sense/fill in some holes if you read that chapter first! —https://archiveofourown.org/works/24922204/chapters/67693517
> 
> There will be lots of adult themes and scenes of explicit gore and sexuality, as well as some angst, but I'll try to keep it to plot support and not let it become the main focus. I just wanted to see them in their own story, so I decided to write one! (´∀｀)♡ Enjoy! ))

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”  
 _—_ Toni Morrison _, Beloved_

_1999_   
_Washington, D.C._

William Coen wasn’t a superstitious guy. Not religious, didn’t come from a religious family. Most of the media he’d consumed since his teenage years was distinctly _irreligious_ , in fact: horror movies with blood by the bucketful, music his parents insisted was "pointless screaming" but Billy identified as an affirmation, a vent of something old and unmistakable and powerful. So much of his life would have been orders of magnitude easier if he believed there was some higher power, some guiding force that had his best intentions at heart. Something testing his faith. 

It wasn’t God that told Billy to come, but tell him to come something did. Something more powerful than religion—fidelity. To what, he wasn’t sure, but he had a few ideas.

~

A storm system had moved in. In a time not so long past, a man might have taken the stacks of iron-grey clouds stretched from horizon to horizon for a bad omen. Some sort of impending doom, blotting out the sun and the sky. Not this time. The cool, moist bluster felt good. Felt optimistic and clean, like sins being blown away on the wind. 

It wasn’t long until the rain started, great heavy gluts of it, cold and sharp like razors. The rain drummed against the roof of Billy’s car and splashed across the windshield in white-gray sheets that obscured his vision, no matter how hard the wiper arms whipped to clear it from the glass.

It was a short trip. Billy got as far as Baltimore, about an hour outside Washington, before someone behind him smacked their Volvo into the bumper of his Buick Lasabre and ran. He wasn’t hurt. The tires still seemed to be inflated and the wheels weren’t vibrating. The car still drove. 

Billy took the first off-ramp he saw. That ramp carried him through seedy streets, the pavement cracked and cratered with potholes, to a gas station. Vertical bars of black iron blocked the building’s doors and windows. A single payphone booth stood outside, scrawled with permanent marker and spray paint in letters both legible and not, piled on top of one another in some attempt to stake a claim. It felt more familiar than any of the places he’d been since leaving Vermont: at least in this place, you knew what to expect. The violence wasn’t concealed behind paperwork or in the fold of a business suit jacket. You could hold it, physically move through it if need be.

Billy stood in the pelting rain and studied the Buick’s gunmetal carcass. The bumper was bent inwards, the frame of the trunk pushed up and left by just enough that it didn’t latch all the way shut, springing half-open like the jaws of an obedient dog. Water pooled in the carpeted lining, bypassing the injured seal. By some intervention of dumb luck, his bag—a black duffel stuffed with everything he might need to bug out at a moment’s notice: changes of clothes, passports, toiletries, a thousand dollars cash sewn into the lining—was completely dry, not yet violated by water. 

Billy dropped a quarter in the slot of the payphone and called his boss long distance. Sharon, her name was, an older lady with piercing bird’s eyes and bleached-blonde hair she wore short and teased up, the kind of person who always seemed so busy that she’d forgotten your existence and was pissed off about being reminded. He gave her some sort of story about a family emergency back in the Midwest, told her about the wreck. He didn’t give many details; easier to keep track of lies if you didn’t give them legs to get up and walk on. She had no reason to disbelieve him: he hadn’t missed work a single time since last year. Hadn’t even been late to a job yet. He didn’t ask for anything, didn’t give excuses or leave work half-done. Billy could barely hear her over the rain, which sounded less like individual drops and more like some asshole throwing buckets of water onto the plexiglass stall that stood between he and the wrath of the storm. He was pleasantly surprised when she accepted his lie without further investigation, told him she hoped everything worked out, said they’d catch up when he came back the following week. She hung up without waiting for a response.

Billy hung the phone by its earpiece into the plastic cradle, painted silver and worn white at the points of contact. Across the street on televisions stacked in a shop window, white-and-red news program banners blasted something he couldn’t see. People hustled past the shop window, newspapers and jackets and umbrellas clutched over their heads. The screens flipped and screamed for attention into the bluster. Some stayed to read the headlines, others went on their way. Billy ducked his head, squared his shoulders, and jogged into the gas station.

A bell overhead rang as Billy opened the door. It wasn’t a pleasant ding, rather a great imposing brassy sound meant to alert employees to an interloper. The man behind the counter, brown skinned and sporting a thick black mustache that matched the haphazard swoops of his hair, watched something on a television bolted against the far wall. He stood behind a thick pane of bulletproof glass with a small rectangular hole cut in the bottom through which to slide money or objects back and forth. His eyes were unfocused and his attention distracted. The radio overhead was playing a muffled rendition of something from the 80s—Toto or Foreigner or Speedwagon. They all sounded the same.

Billy stood cold and dripping in the “automotive aisle”, an endcap of air fresheners shaped like cartoon pine trees and dusty bottles of Armor All crammed between displays of candy, condoms, and tampons. A few coils of yellow-and-black bungee rope hung from hooks in cellophane wrappers. Billy took all three, walked away, then stopped himself and grabbed a candy bar, a bottle of water, and all of the ponchos they had in a nearby wire rack, packed in tiny plastic squares, before heading for the counter. He stood waiting for the man behind the pane of bulletproof glass to notice his presence. The man didn’t. Not immediately. His eyes were still on the television.

“They voting yet?” Billy asked. Turned to look over his shoulder to a woman on the television. She was uncommonly pretty with the most intense set of blue eyes he’d ever seen, brown hair down to mid-throat. Her image spoke in still-frame to someone across the room, a slender hand aloft for emphasis. She was of interest the way a nice car or a glittering piece of jewelry around someone’s neck might have been, enough to catch your eye, examine the lines and the gloss, then go about your day having appreciated something fine. Billy’s attention wasn’t on her long—it drifted, as it did whenever the trial was on the television, behind her, to her left. 

_”In just hours the Senate will cast its historic vote in the case of The United States v Umbrella Incorporated,”_ said a female voice, projected and formal, “ _capping off proceedings that have been fiery, dramatic, and at times, violent. The stories of trauma…”_

The man behind the glass blinked back to Billy with a polite start, then smiled. “Sorry, friend. No, no votes. Just… talk talk talk. You know? Always talk talk talk.”

Billy nodded. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and moved his eyes away from the television with some difficulty, the effort to keep them away more difficult still. “That’s the truth.”

  
~

  
The rain didn’t let up. The news stations showing the trial now floated a black ribbon with robotic white text, warnings of flash floods and storm surges for low lying counties. Billy lined the dented ass-end of his car with the ponchos, tied the trunk shut with the series of bungee cords. Satisfied with his work (which was ugly as sin but functional, which was all that mattered), he drove with the care and speed of a man carting eggs in his passenger seat until he saw blinking neon motel lights on a hill, and booked himself for the night under the name Daniel Black. He hauled his duffel bag into the room, checked the mattress for telltale rusty splotches of bed bugs, and when he found none, stripped off his soaked clothing, threw it into a pile on the tile of the bathroom floor, and took a shower as hot as the water would pump to scare some of the chill from his bones.

When Billy emerged from the bathroom in a billow of steam with a towel around his waist, scrubbing at the damp loops of his dark hair with the only other towel the motel supplied, the messages on the television screen had changed. A red-and-white marquee bellowed in its strident glare: 

**UNITED STATES SENATE VOTES TO DISSOLVE UMBRELLA INCORPORATED**   
_Senate Deadlocked in 50-50 Tie: VP Gore Casts Tiebreak Vote to Dissolve, GOP Threatens Impeachment_

Billy stood, still as a statue. He read the words five times or better before their meaning stuck.

“Holy fuck,” he mumbled, and turned up the volume on the television set with the provided remote. He sat on the edge of the bed. The towel on his head hung, forgotten, then fell with an impotent flop to the carpet between his feet.

On the screen, a news anchor with snow-white hair and a mouth bracketed by sophisticated lines stared into the camera. He spoke with a sense of gravity that matched his solemn expression. 

"After nearly two weeks of testimony ranging from the idyllic to the sordid, United States Congress has voted to dissolve pharmaceutical megagiant Umbrella Incorporated. Now, this is not unusual, but the size of the company involved _is_ —Umbrella is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, which is larger than the GDP of some entire countries. While lawmakers—who voted largely down party lines—said they took the economic impact into account, ultimately _no_ amount of money was worth the horrors we’ve seen both on tape from journalist Alyssa Ashcroft, who is credited with bringing the case to trial, and from the testimony of the survivors of the incident themselves. Just… truly, really remarkable stuff. We’re... we're living history right now, there's really no other way to describe it."

Well, that was that. Wasn't it? Everyone had gotten what they wanted. The survivors of Raccoon City (a group to which Billy technically belonged but never really owned, the way someone might have a streak of ethnic blood but decline to adopt their culture out of respect) got their justice; Umbrella got their ass-kicking in front of the entire fucking world, sorely deserved; Rebecca got her chance to help, to do a good deed for no reason other than to be of use; Billy got his freedom and his new life filled with payday steaks and cold beer and all the Maiden concerts Bruce Dickinson’s vocal chords could handle. And on top of that, for bonus points, he got to tell Rebecca thank you. In person. Six o’clock and all’s well, curtains, end credits, the Empire was defeated and now the Ewoks were dancing in their little Ewok rave in the forest. Everybody go home.

Billy was happy for her—for _them_ , yeah, but if he was being honest he didn’t really give a shit about _them_ , he was concerned about _her_.

_So what now? You just kick up your heels and ride into the sunset and go knock up some girl who doesn’t give enough of a shit about you to know where you’ve been—that this matters to you, too?_

Well, maybe. Who knew?

_Would you be happy with that? **Are** you happy with that? _

Billy had to admit he wasn’t.

_Yeah, because she would check in on you. To see how you were holding up. Even if she thought it was a happy conclusion… she would give enough of a shit to check in. Because she cares. That’s why she did any of this._

Of course she would.

_So, do **you**?_

It was a fucking horrible idea. Grasping defeat from the jaws of victory, even, if you were feeling dramatic enough. Billy made a clean break. The ball was in his court, now all he had to do was sink the three-pointer and live the rest of his life. There was nothing tying him to Billy Coen except habit, and those were easily broken. Nothing tying him to the Marine Corps. Nothing tying him to Raccoon City except the occasional nightmare and his newfound hatred of monkeys and their beady little eyes. It was over. 

_There IS something tying you to Raccoon City, and you know it—or rather Raccoon City is tying you to someone. Isn’t that right?  
_

All was silent as he thought. Billy shook his head. His breath left his chest in a defeated sigh, and he pushed back to his feet. 

He returned to the bathroom, plunged his hand into the soggy pile of his jeans, searched with a frantic need until his fingertips felt paper, soft and moist and cool in its folded square. He walked to the phone beside his bed and punched in the numbers on the key pad, his eyes on the television while he waited. The phone rang fifteen or twenty times before it picked up. The sounds of excited chatter, a smattering of cheers over the line. She may have been at a party. Hell, probably was, given what just happened.

“Hello?” Breathless excitement on a voice high and soft and intelligent. Something quivered the under the surface of that voice. Nerves.

Billy stilled himself before he spoke. “Well, well, well. On TV _again_?” 

“B…” Rebecca’s breath hitched; she stammered, caught herself. “H-hi, Daniel! One… second, okay?” Muffled, _I’ll be right back, you guys go on without me. Yep, I’m sure. Love you too._

“I can’t believe it.” The chatter on the other end of the line quieted, died to a dull roar, replaced by the rush of tires on wet concrete. “It’s really over. Like—reall _y really_ over. I-in a way that will hurt them. I’m just—I’m not sure what to do with myself. I’ve been bouncing all over the room, and—and I’m shaking and… I can’t believe we got them. We got them!”

Her excitement piqued a faint smile. Billy felt it emerge, remembered himself, and shook it off. In the distance, a loud whoop split the air, followed by a man’s exuberant voice: _Fuck yeah, suck it, you Nazi pieces of shit!_ A chorus of cheers in response.

Billy furrowed his brows. A laugh fought its way from his chest. “You at a trial or a football game?”

“You know, as the night goes on, I’m not really sure.” A silence fell between them, and she swallowed. “Are you back home already? Did you make it okay?”

“Nah—had to stop because of the rain. Some asshole rear-ended me, and—”

“What?! Are you okay?”

“—I’m fine, Doc. Just a fender bender. Outside Baltimore right now and saw you on the TV here. Just thought I’d say congrats. Know how much...” _This means to you?_ "I know how hard you worked for it."

Billy thought he could hear her pointed huff. He could envision with clarity how she’d plant her hands against her hips in defiance. What he received, however, was very different from what he imagined, as things often were.

“You know—none of this would be possible without you.” Her words came in a great rush, like she was forcing them out before deciding better of it. “I’m glad to hear from you. I really wanted to talk to you about it.”

A queer blow hit his chest and blew away his prepackaged sarcastic responses, if only for a moment. How long had it been since someone had wanted to talk to him? To tell him about something happy that had happened to them? How long had it been since he’d been the one someone… _anyone_ thought of when something important came down the pike? That feeling of being off-center melted into a peculiar discomfort, a discomfort as pronounced as it was unwelcome.

“Billy?”

“Yeah.” He wiped a hand over his face. “Yeah, sorry, I’m still here.”

“So what’s next for you? I’m guessing you’ll be back on the road tomorrow?”

“That’s the plan. I’m off work until next week, though, so I may just take it easy. Go the scenic route.”

“That sounds nice. It’s beautiful up there. No scenic route for me… my flight’s been grounded because of the hurricane. Three days, maybe four.”

Billy didn’t realize he’d slipped into thought again, neglected to respond until Rebecca followed with: “You there?”

_So, do you?_

“Yeah,” he said, “just thinking. If you’ve got serious I’m-on-TV doctor stuff to get to, I could give you a ride. I’m going that way. Not far off the trail.”

It was Rebecca’s turn for silence, a silence that ended with a quiet giggle. “Listen to you. How sweet.”

“Ah-ah. One nice gesture per customer. Don’t push it.”

“That’s really nice, but I could never ask you to go out of your way like that.” She sounded hesitant, ringed with something else. Billy thought it sounded a bit like hope. “That’s at least an hour, two?”

“You didn’t ask—might be why I offered.”

“Right. Well… well… sure. If you’re sure it won’t be a big deal?” 

Billy was struck by that off-kilter feeling again, this time the disorienting lightness of putting down something heavy.

“Opposite of a big deal. Just let me know when your adoring public will let you loose, and I’ll swoop by.”

“You know,” she paused, “you don’t act like it, but you’re a really nice guy.”

Pff. “Yeah, well. We’ll see if you think that after you’re stuck in a car with me for ten hours.”

“I’ve gotta get back—they’re going to come looking for me. Come by at about two, tomorrow?”

“Two it is.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Click.

Billy hung up the phone.

_You dumb bastard._


	2. Pittsburgh

_It started this way every time._

_Rebecca’s shoulder was punctured. By the grace of sheer fortune, one of the teeth—elongated and pointed, dull like a yellowed knitting needle—plunged through the meat but missed the delicate architecture of her rotator cuff. Blood bubbled from the puncture, an oil-strike in white dirt. It trickled down the length of her arm, dark and shining. She stumbled back, tried to run. Her foot touched a beam in the floor that shook and cracked, deep and dry like a huge kindling twig. Her intuition knew before her brain did that she was dead._

_A section of the floor fell loose and crumbled under her. Rebecca went down with it in a tilted sprawl; she landed hard on a ledge that was no wider than her own body. That too collapsed, and she screamed, her uninjured arm wrapped around a rusted iron support girder that jutted from where the ledge used to be. The tiles and rotten wood plunged into the dark. They landed, eventually, somewhere deep and cavernous beneath her feet. There were too many seconds. Too much space. She tried to search for purchase with her feet, but other than a sheer rock support, there was nothing. Her other arm moved, but wouldn’t help heft her weight, slippery with hot coppery blood and barking in sharp blasts of pain when the connective muscles tensed._

_She didn’t remember much about the actual event, but recalled with terrible vividness the emotions surrounding it. She was terrified, terrified and tired and alone, the muscles in her good arm threatening to unravel at their fibers, hot and exhausted. After a sleep, the muscles from her upper back to her fingertips were pulled, her shoulder joint strained in a lasting injury that still plagued her. Over her radio, Billy demanded her location. The sudden edge in his voice roused her by degrees, an edge she would recognize later as the bark of a commanding officer demanding compliance._

_Rebecca told him where she was._

_It was going to hurt. It was going to hurt so bad—maybe, if she was lucky, she’d hit her head against a rock or a piece of fallen debris and it would be fast. Just one swift crack of the smooth bone over her cranium, and her body would shut down her senses long enough to save itself from most of the pain. It was dark; he wouldn’t see her body with her head half-off, viscera smeared across the first hard surface she’d met. Maybe this was a blessing. No slow death from a bite. No having the glistening ropes of her entrails pulled out of her body by a pack of starving nightmares after she and Billy had used their last bullets._

_Time skipped forward, her brain gliding over the filler like a swan across the surface of a lake towards the next visceral spike of emotion: Billy’s head peering over the side of the sinkhole, the concern and terror on his face. He lunged for her, dug his long fingers under the hard, formed straps of her kevlar. The vest was worn snug; when he gripped the straps in his fists his knuckles punched against the tissue just under her collarbones, left kiss-mark bruises over her breasts that didn't fade for weeks. They were both exhausted. Rebecca thought he’d have trouble lifting her. Maybe the floor would give under him and they’d both tumble to their deaths, forgotten in a pool of stagnant water. He braced his feet against the floor and pushed._

_“You’re not going out like this, babygirl.” He grunted. “You’ve got a world to save, remember?”_

_Rebecca was lifted like a kitten scruffed by its mother, helpless and inert. The soles of her boots touched the floor. She tried to stand but her joints wouldn’t hold her weight—they tumbled together and she ended up on top of him. His eyes, clever and tilted, opened as wide as she’d ever seen them; he was staring at the wound on her shoulder, a formation of torn skin and pink flesh in the unmistakable arc of teeth._

_“You’re bitten,” he stammered, “when did you get…?”_

_Rebecca shook her head. “Not… not…” Not fatal, not a human, she tried to say, but her voice broke. A clot of tears choked the word and killed it before it left her mouth, spilled hot down her face, carving gentle paths through the grime and the sweat and the blood that had caked to her skin. She put her face in her hands and cried. She remembered him being close, remembered taking solace in the nearness and the warmth, couldn’t remember if he hugged her or not. She thought he had: from that point forward he bore a large bloom of blood pressed against the left side of his chest. But she couldn’t remember, the fine details lost under the wailing spin of her brain._

_“You’ve gotta have some of your stuff in here.” A tug on her belt and the sharp zip of her pack opening. “Tell me how to use them.”_

_When she was composed enough to speak again: “Four-point-seven-five to one ratio, green-to-red. Too much red… too much red neutralizes the—”_

_It wasn’t difficult. Overtly complicated, perhaps; green herbs were leafy and acerbic to the touch, and contact with their fluids could give you chemical burns. Red herbs were thin and soft like rose petals, hard to grind small enough without the fronds slipping between the teeth of the device, and—_

_“Shh,” Billy chided her, quietly. He looked over one shoulder, then the other. “I got you. Just give me a minute.” Then: “So what’s your favorite movie?”_

_“What?” The question confused her with such sudden intensity she wondered if she had suffered head trauma on her way down._

_“What’s your favorite movie? I’ve got two.” The cords of his shoulder muscles tensed under his damp, dirt-streaked skin as he worked on his knees beside her. “The Thing, and Night of the Living Dead. Think that last one’s getting demoted, though. I told you mine, now you gotta tell me yours.”_

_“The Last Unicorn,” Rebecca said, after a moment. Though her brain was slowed from blood loss and the sudden dump of adrenaline, she recognized what he was doing; he was trying to scare away the encroaching shroud of shock with the torch of his voice. “The Last Unicorn’s my favorite movie.”_

_Rebecca expected him to bark a laugh. Expected some sort of taunt about how young she was. Billy didn’t laugh. He smiled, still focused, a loose loop of his sweaty hair hung over his eyes like a coal-black half moon. “Cute.” He said. “That’s a good one, too.”_

_Rebecca remembered watching him. Remembered the attention with which he patted the concoction into her wounds, so careful, the way his fox-like face tightened when she made sounds of pain. She also remembered being proud of him—and making up her mind._

_“You didn’t kill those people,” She said. Billy’s eyes snapped up like she’d offended him, a sudden tension in his gaze. “Did you?” It wasn’t a question. It was a challenge, a dare to be proven wrong._

_Billy was silent._

_“I’m not going to judge you. But I don’t think you did. Or those guards, either.”_

_“You sound sure,” he said, dismissive._

_“I’m being serious.”_

_Billy sat up and away from her. “No.” It could have been her injuries or some other happening that made a young woman’s senses run away from her head, but Rebecca thought she saw a flicker of another face under his studied placidity; something deeply sad, eaten around the edges with resignation. Then it was gone. “But it doesn’t matter now.”_

Rebecca awoke to a shadow that fell across her face and blotted out the morning light. She opened her eyes. Her face was nestled against a pair of breasts, warm and soft, covered in a thin white blouse, her right arm and leg thrown across the figure beneath her. An arm was wrapped around Rebecca’s shoulders in kind, the smooth plush of a face leaned against her forehead. The person smelled of sugar, delicate and powdered, but the green, Earthy aroma of marijuana was unmistakable; it hung over the room like a fog.

Rebecca lifted her head and squinted. Beside her, still asleep, Jill made a gentle sound deep in her throat. On the other end of the couch, the man Rebecca had heard other people call Heavy (a nickname that seemed to confuse Jill every time she heard it but stuck regardless) was rubbing his dark eyes, trying to blink some alert back into them. He noticed Rebecca stir.

“Morning, sunshine,” he said in a distinct New York accent. “How’s your head?”

“Uh—it’s okay,” Rebecca stammered, “did I hit it?”

He laughed. He had the whitest teeth Rebecca had ever seen, contrasted with the deep olive of his skin, the dark shag of his hair. “Uh, nope. Well, not that I saw, anyways. Jill made sure you were okay. You and Kevin there started doing tequila shots, and…” he gestured, vaguely, to where a man was sprawled on the floor, moaning in pain and clutching a pillow over his head. Heavy stood up.

“You want anything from Denny’s? I’m gonna go on a breakfast run. Well, brunch right about now, but…”

Brunch? Rebecca looked at her watch. 11:47.

“Oh, _shit_.” The curse perked his attention. His heavy brows raised in surprise. “I gotta go, I’m late. Hey. Hey, Jill? I gotta go. Thank you for taking care of me.” Rebecca placed a big, wet, Bugs Bunny smooch on Jill’s forehead. “Love you.” A quiet, hissing, conspiratorial whisper. “Congratulations.”

“Mhm,” Jill sighed in her sleep. Rebecca picked herself from beneath Jill's arm, careful to avoid the tiny distended bump of her abdomen. “B’caref…” she trailed off, asleep once more.

“Where you staying? I’ll give you a lift.” Heavy said. As Rebecca drew closer, the smell of weed was definitely coming from him. People celebrated in different ways, she supposed.

“The Marriott over off of Seventh,” Rebecca said, “you sure it’s no trouble?”

“Nah, ‘course not. If you’re Jill’s family, you’re my family. Oh! Speaking of Jill.” He dug in the pocket of his dark dress pants, tailored slim around the powerful muscles of his lower half. “Here, she said to give this to you. Said you forgot it last night.” A bracelet, glittering 18 karat gold and brown leather between small beads of pure jade hung off his long, strong fingers. Even though she was looking at the bracelet, Rebecca clutched her bare wrist to check for it, panicked when she didn’t feel it, then accepted it from his grasp.

“Oh, God,” she sighed. Once reattached, she was comforted by its weight. “Thank you. If I lost this I think both of my parents would stroke out. Simultaneously.”

Heavy just laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. “Well, no sweat. Just me saving the day, yet again. C’mon, let’s get you some coffee.”

~

When Billy awoke, he tried to think of reasons to cancel. Considered doing what people would later come to term _ghosting_ —just not showing up and letting silence be his explanation. Driven by the emotion of the previous two days, he’d made a string of choices that were dangerous and foolish, like a drowning man climbing out of a raging sea only to turn around and cannonball right back in. His mind was divided in two, neither part his own. But there was a reason.

_There’s always a reason to be an idiot, dumbass, that doesn’t mean you have to **do it**._

But as he sat in the parking lot of the hotel, staring at the police cruiser with its hazard lights blinking red, parked in front of the main entrance, no reasons sounded good enough to Billy. Two officers uniformed in black stood by the car, talking. Billy chewed on his lower lip, nervous.

 _You can tell her,_ he thought, _you can tell her there were police outside and she’ll understand. She knows you. She knows the deal._

Billy leaned to turn the key in the ignition when the doors of the hotel slid open with a puff of hydraulics. The police officers turned towards the sound. Rebecca emerged wearing a pair of white low-top Chuck Taylors and a pale blue dress without any sleeves, the front of it closed by a straight trail of buttons up to her chest. It was an image that gave him quiet pause. It was summer time, it was hot, and the fewer layers of clothing between yourself and the sun the better. But in Billy’s mind’s eye, Rebecca would always rock up in those same khaki pants rolled up to mid-shin, slender frame buried beneath a small armory of belts and Kevlar and badges shining with ostentatious gropes at authority.

She was lugging a suitcase and a heavy backpack, speaking on a cell phone held to her ear, and she looked both ways across the parking lot. Looked for him.

He pretended to consider his options. His hand left the key where it dangled from the dashboard.

“I know,” Rebecca said, for the fourth time in a row. On the other end of the line, Jacob—Jacob, whose anal retentive fixation on deadlines and small details usually put Rebecca at ease—was now turning those neuroses on her.

“I don’t think you _do_ know,” Jacob retorted, his voice tense and quick, “your first draft is due next week. Not next month, next _week_. That’s seven days—”

 _I know how many days are in a week, jerk._ “I know, Jacob.”

“—and you’re telling me you’re taking any of those days to travel by car when you can take a plane? Are you going to have your draft in so we can give Doctor Thomas the assignment, or not?”

“Look. I know. I just had important stuff to do this week and then my plane got grounded, there’s the big hurricane—”

“I know about the hurricane.”

“—I’ll get it in on time. I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I get it. But we’re trying to save the world here, Rebecca.” She tried to convince herself he was being dramatic. He was overstating a doctoral candidate’s role, but she knew the pressure of the group project—especially the exasperated anxiety when one participant threatened to slack. “Think of what’s at stake. None of what you did is going to matter if we don’t get the rollout started, and to start the rollout, _we need you here_. These volunteers have been waiting for—”

The doors to the hotel slid apart on their electronic rails, and Rebecca was greeted by the same two officers Billy had seen, standing with feet apart and their thumbs hooked in their beltloops. They turned to the door as it opened.

 _Oh, no._ Rebecca looked in the cruiser—it was empty, light from the overcast sky reflecting dull and waxy off the leather interior. Nobody on the periphery. She breathed out.

“I have to go, Jacob. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Wait a minute! Wait. We need to—”

“Okay, bye.” Rebecca hung up the phone and shoved it into her purse, thankful to be free of the conversation.

“You need some help, miss?” One of the officers—an older man with dark brown skin, a bald head, a mustache—asked, one of his keen hunter’s eyes on her heavy backpack. Though a spit of rain had started to mist, both officers were sweating in the oppressive bake of the late June heat, great fat beads of it rolling down their temples, under their shirtcollars.

“Oh no, no,” Rebecca said, with a laugh she hoped hid the sudden tension in her belly. “College student. I’m used to it.”

She passed them, stood at the designated pick-up stop marked by a sign, and peeked around for any sign of Billy’s massive gunmetal boat of a car. She didn’t see him. He might just have been stuck in traffic. But he also might have seen the police and left.

She checked her watch. 2:03PM. She smoothed her skirt behind her thighs, lowered to a sit on the curb, and waited in the mist, her face leaned on her hand. Not a minute after she took her seat, resigned to the possibility that pure chance had dashed their best-laid plans, a familiar car rolled up alongside, parked, and Billy’s tall, long form ducked out of the car door. He was dressed indistinctly, a simple white t-shirt and blue jeans, this time missing his hat—maybe too hot for it. His hair was normally combed back, away from his face, but it had grown so long that it parted on one side, the ends laid against his shoulders. She didn’t think she could ever get used to the dark beard that obscured his jawline, even though he kept it trimmed close to his face. He wore the same heavy workboots, as close to a personal style mainstay as he got.

“Hey,” Rebecca smiled. She got to her feet, released the handle of her suitcase and held her hands towards him, a wordless offer of a hug. He didn’t so much embrace her as let her embrace him, one hand gently tapping her upper back. It was enough for her. Baby steps.

“Hey yourself,” he said, and took her suitcase. Rebecca had dragged them to the lobby on her own, and considered protesting— _I can carry those myself, you know_ —but stopped short. Knowing Billy, he’d probably laugh at her and continue what he was doing, anyway.

“How was the party?” Billy asked, an amused lilt to his raspy smoker’s voice, and shoved the suitcase into the backseat with an ease that made Rebecca feel particularly frail.

“It was… good. You know, just… well, you heard it.” She shrugged off the backpack and hefted its weight in his direction, unable to lift it very far. He hauled it, placed it beside its companion and shut the door.

The officers watched with interest when Billy dodged around the nose of the car to reach his driver’s side. He was close enough to reach out and touch one of them if he so chose. Or for them to touch him. He opened the car door, and one of the officers—a white woman—said: 

“Sir?” She stepped off the curb and approached him.

Billy stopped, his hand on the door. His fingers curled against the jamb, out of the officer's view. “Afternoon."

The officer came closer, her heavy vest and weapons and cuffs jingling and clinking like the sound of chains. “Your friend dropped these,” she said. A jingle as a set of keys changed hands. “They looked important.”

“Thanks. Don’t want to lose those.”

An ambulance rolled into the curve of the driveway in front of the hotel. The black cop dropped his coffee cup in a nearby trash can, and waved the arriving team of paramedics over. His partner joined, Billy and Rebecca forgotten. 

When Billy climbed into the driver’s seat, Rebecca was waiting for him with an expression of nervous relief. He tossed her the keys and she caught them in both hands. 

“Well,” she said, “everyone awake now?”

They drove for the better part of a half hour in silence. Billy glanced to his rear view mirror every few minutes so subtly Rebecca almost didn’t catch the repeated flickers of his eyes, the tense divot of his jaw muscles under his skin. When they turned onto the highway and picked up speed, the line of his wide shoulders relaxed, and he leaned back in his seat. 

“Oh, here it is,” Rebecca was futzing with the radio dial, squeals of static and songs half-laid over one another. She stopped on a radio station that was playing the Backstreet Boys. “I found your favorite band.”

Rebecca expected displeasure, stone-faced and absolute. To her surprise, he smiled a little. “Funny. I’m going to pull over and leave you on the side of the road. Would you want it that way?”

“You wouldn’t do that.” She replied with an affected elitism, her nose in the air. “You’re a gentleman. Carried my bags and everything.”

“Appreciate the compliment, but ‘gentleman’ is a strong word. No music,” He glanced down to the floor of the car, as if to check for something to apparate there before he said so. “Unless it’s the radio. CD player’s broken.”

“Vermont to Virginia with no music? That’s rough.”

“I survived. Though I will warn you, if I hear _Drops of Jupiter_ one more time, I _will_ drive us into a ditch.”

Rebecca crinkled her nose. “I hate that song.”

“Right?” Billy said; he gestured with a hand as if to say: _THANK you_.

“You’ve got a tape deck adapter, though…” Rebecca leaned forward, squinted at the half-inch slot beneath the stereo. Billy protested—”hey, what are you”—and she used a pen from her purse to squirrel out a flat cable the length of her forearm. “Aha!”

“You wanna tell me what you just did to my car and why you’re holding a wire connected to the dashboard?”

“It’s um—you can plug this into a Discman or a Walkman and play it through the auxiliary cable. You didn’t know that? It goes through the tape deck.”

“Bought this car used,” he admitted, with a note of surrender. “Thought they just jammed a tape in there and broke it. Never tried to get it out. Check out the brain on you.”

“More than just a pretty face,” Rebecca added, excited and happy, already plunging her hands into her large purse, pushing objects around.

“Well, MENSA, fire her up. My wallet of CDs is on the floor there, by your feet.”

Rebecca clicked the metal end of the wire into the headphone jack of her Discman, a round, flat, silver object that looked like someone had pried the CD player off the top of a boombox. She set it down on one of her bare thighs, then set her sights on the wallet. “Let’s see what we’ve got…” Rebecca unzipped the wallet, spread it over her lap like a book, and read the titles of the CDs.

Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden, again… Death ( _Death_?). King Diamond. White Zombie, Judas Priest, Pantera. What in the blue hell was a Pantera, other than misspelling of a genus of mammal? Rebecca didn’t want to know.

Her excitement flagged, and she flipped a few pages, found nobody she knew by name. “Um…”

Thoughtful silence. Billy looked to her in the rear view mirror. “What?”

“It’s, um… oh! Here we go. The Offspring. This is a good one.”

“I forgot to take that out of there, I was going to use it as a coaster.”

“…oh.”

“I’m fucking with you. Wouldn’t have pegged you as a punk rock kid. That’s kind of cool.”

“I’m full of surprises.” The strains of guitar rang out and Rebecca settled back in her seat, the device stabilized on one of her strong runner’s thighs, aside the hem of her skirt. His face still forward towards the wide, empty road, Billy risked another glance in the Discman’s direction, though the device wasn’t the focus of his attention. Not even close.

“So what’s the itinerary?” Rebecca asked.

“Depends." Eyes forward again. "Where’s your school?”

“Cambridge. Massachusetts, East of here.”

His window was partially rolled down, and the whipping highway wind toyed with his hair. “I figure straight shot north—only takes about 8 hours. Baltimore, Philly, Connecticut, Mass. Barre’s only about an hour and a half from there. We’ll have you home by the end of the day if we minimize the pit stops. What school are we talking in Mass?”

 _Barre,_ Rebecca committed the name to memory, like running her fingers over the indentation of something precious. _Barre, Vermont._

“MIT.”

A low, impressed whistle. “Big time.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure. Can’t guarantee I’ll have an answer.”

“Do you ever wonder…” Rebecca didn’t sound happy. She paused, reeled her train of thought back down the track, then started again. “You were in the military for a long time, right?” She tried to imagine what he’d look like with a buzzed head, suited in olive drab gear, or maybe in a dress uniform with a high collar and shining ribbons on his breast.

Billy nodded, his eyes on the road. “Almost ten years.”

“Is this okay to talk about? I don’t want to…”

Billy shrugged one shoulder, ambivalent. “If it gets too much, I’ll tell you.”

“Have you ever been away from home for so long that you start to feel… like it would be weird to go back? Like something… big has changed that people wouldn’t get.” She paused. “I’m sorry, that’s completely inappropriate, now that I hear myself say it.”

Billy did know that; knew it very, very well. He ignored her anxious apologies. “What, think you’ve outgrown it?”

Tentative. “I guess so, yeah.”

“Think everyone who leaves home feels that way at one point or another. The world’s big. Leaving changes you, whether it’s your idea or not. Wait, you haven’t been back to Indiana since last year?”

Rebecca shook her head. “Nope.”

“Not even with all this… trial stuff, being on TV?”

“Been kind of avoiding it.”

They dropped the subject, until Billy spoke again some moments later.

“Do you want to?”

She took a breath in. “I mean… I go back and forth. But with the trial, it might be important to get up there someday when things are less… you know… heavy. And when I have more time.”

Billy glanced aside at her again and caught a picture of discomfort; she was playing with the hem of her dress, her face unhappy. Billy hit his turn signal, checked over his shoulder for clearance, switched lanes West. Rebecca blinked, turned and looked over her right shoulder at that straight-shot road taking them North to Philadelphia, now a rapidly-shrinking stripe in the distance.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking you to Indiana,” Billy said, as if discussing the color of the sky or the wetness of water. “I’ve got time. Do you?”

Rebecca didn’t. She knew it, Jacob knew it, Billy even seemed to have gleaned it. But between the hard walls that enclosed her, days and weeks always measured by the tick of a clock, something to do, be, undertake… she considered Billy’s time, and how close they’d both come to not having any ever again. And here he was—willing to spend that time on _her_.

Rebecca felt something in the proximity of her chest soften. It yielded by just a touch, but yield it did. She smiled.

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ve got time.”

“Alright. You ever been to Pittsburgh?”

“Nope." The idea was more encouraging as the seconds ticked by. “Let’s do it.”

~

_Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania_   
_7:45 pm_

The woman behind the counter looked up from her magazine, and regarded them with a gaze that managed to be both skeptical and uninterested simultaneously.

“Hi,” Rebecca said. They were both stiff, tired in the way you could only get from sitting on your ass all day when you weren’t used to it, having only stopped twice on the road here—once at a truck stop outside Hagerstown to use the restroom, and once at a gas station just inside the Pennsylvania border for something to drink. The woman returned greeting with a mumbled _evening_. She looked to Billy, evaluated the blue-collar uniform of his plain attire, then back to Rebecca in her dress and her pearl earrings.

“By the hour or by the night?” The woman asked.

“The night—just one. One _night_ , I mean. We’ll take two rooms, please.” Rebecca reached into her wallet and rifled through bills, worn soft from handling. She took point on most of the talking, trying her best to be businesslike despite the high-pitched softness of her voice and demeanor. Billy wasn’t sure why she took point, but wasn’t inclined to stop her, either.

“We’ve just got the one single room—cancellation. The Phillies are playing the Pirates this week plus there’s the concert, so we’re totally full.”

“Uh…” Rebecca looked back to Billy, as if in apology. “What do you think?”

“Depends on you,” he said, a shrug in his voice. “Bunking down doesn’t bother me.” It was true. He had spent months at a time overseas in uniform, and though when available officers were normally afforded more elegant arrangements, you learned fast to grab sleep in whatever position you could get horizontal, no matter who or what was around. The idea seemed to bother _her_ , though—flustered her from the soles of her white Chucks up to the top of her head, a detail he found both endearing and interesting, tucked away into his pocket for later teasing.

“That’s right… “ Rebecca said. “…well, if you don’t mind… sure. That’s fine. Just the one room for the night, please.”

Money was exchanged for a single key on a ring with a cheap plastic tag, Rebecca said her thank yous, and Billy took their bags without comment, his duffel diagonal across his torso by its strap, her suitcase in one hand and her heavy backpack slung over his other shoulder. She opened the door to their room—perfectly serviceable but not a resort by any stretch, a single queen-sized bed covered in white sheets and a matching duvet bumpered against the leftmost wall. An armchair that looked scratchy and worn sat opposite a television set that was probably purchased when she was still in pigtails and overalls. On the far wall, a single window with a large, wide sill, its uppermost pane replaced by a rotating fan. Outside the window, the neon mating calls of eateries and music joints and pawn shops sang into the night air. The colors mixed to cast a bright glow over the room that faded from pink to blue to purple, undulating in slats across the far wall.

“Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess,” Rebecca said, the subtle shake of nervousness settled into resignation. She looked at the single bed with unhappy discomfort, Billy already offloading their bags onto the floor. “Okay. I can fit in the chair. Considering you’re… um…” she watched him kneel, grunt, and tip the mattress up onto its side. “What are you doing?”

“Checking for bugs.”

“…oh.” It was a good idea, but something that had never crossed her mind. “I was going to say, since you’re about nine feet tall, maybe you should take the bed?”

Satisfied, Billy dropped the mattress and scooted it back into position with his knees. “I’m not gonna make you sleep in a chair. We can both fit in it,” Billy said. “Lots of room.”

Rebecca paused, suddenly tense. “You don’t think that’s… weird?”

He sat on the edge of the mattress, kicked one ankle up on the opposite knee, and unlaced his work boots with short, efficient jerks. “I’m a gentleman, remember? It’s only weird if you make it that way. You can shove a pillow barricade in the middle if it’ll make you feel better.” He tossed the boot to the floor where it landed with a hollow thump, and then started work on the other. The neon signs outside the window cast an electric rainbow against the dark slick of his hair, pink and blue and pale yellow.

Rebecca was unconvinced, still deep in the throes of romance borne of naivete; such an innocent proposal had a salacious undercurrent she couldn’t shake. She could hear her mother’s voice, an articulate cudgel used to mete out judgments against those she found wanting. _I’m not worried about **you** , Becky, I’m worried about **him**. Men get these ideas into their heads, you see, and who could blame him?_

A soft bed was incredibly tempting—and she trusted him. Surely if violence or impropriety was on his mind, there had been ample time to apply it before now.

Something outside caught Billy’s eye and he stood, pattered to window on bare feet against worn, varnished hardwood. He turned the wing-lock on the frame and pulled the pane of glass up, stepped onto the fire escape outside, then sat on the sill. The faint sounds of laughter and conversation floated in on the warm breeze, heavy with the scent of wet pavement.

“Come over here,” he said, with the perk of an excited smile, “check it out.”

Rebecca followed him. On the street below, a milling collection of people gathered in loose groups, smoking and gesturing to each other as they chattered. They looked young; most of them were dressed in black, despite the humid weather. Chains and studs and spikes of all sizes and shapes glinted in the hazy orange sodium lights, smeared patches of dark makeup and hair dyed all different colors of the rainbow thrown into relief between the night and the street fixtures. Billy moved to the side to make room for her to sit on the sill with him, and Rebecca did so; her feet didn’t reach the iron slats of the fire escape, but his did.

“Huh,” Rebecca looked at the people, abuzz with happy excitement. Fragrant swirls of clove smoke drifted over the smell of the rain and the cement and the sudden, close scent of Billy’s deodorant, projected by the summer-warmth of his body. As if inspired, he struck up his own cigarette from a pack in his pocket. “Looks like a tough crowd. I wonder who’s playing?”

“Not sure. Looks like someone good, though.” He offered the pack to her and Rebecca waved it away. “Big crowd for a little venue.”

A distorted wail sounded, a wall of noise, like listening to a guitar through TV static, then a steady drumbeat. When a man started to sing in a distinctive, deep voice, Billy’s eyes opened wide in recognition, and he laughed to himself.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Fuck yeah.”

“Someone good?”

Billy told her who it was—a band named after a blood type, one she’d never heard of outside of this night, crammed into a cheap by-the-hour motel. The singer crooned in a dark, luxurious voice over a scream of guitars, and though the music diffused through the walls of the building and across the street, what lyrics Rebecca could pick out were overtly sexual and longing in turns, a vulnerability spread smooth like butter over the tough-guy sensibility of the music. The people streamed into the venue, their concert underway. Billy nodded along, tapped the tips of his fingers on his knee along with the beat.

“Do you want to go? Maybe they’re still selling tickets.”

Billy thought about it, shook his head and blew out a spigot of smoke away from her. “Nah. Looks fun, but it’s a little too heavy on the people for me. I’m sure you’re tired.”

Rebecca considered if that would be enough to stop her if he really wanted to go, and she found it wasn’t. She was accustomed to Billy’s face, fox-like and angular, being ground into a hard evaluative squint or the placid neutrality that he was careful to wear except in the most dire situations; but he was smiling, an actual interested, natural smile.

 _If whatever it was put that look on his face…_ Rebecca thought, _I think I’d be okay with tired._

They sat together on the sill until the music ceased an hour or so later, and the throng of people flowed from the doorways, into their laughing jackal-packs of black leather and steel edges once again, dispersing down the streets.

“What’d you think?” Billy asked, and turned to her.

“I think they talk about sex a lot..." Rebecca meant to follow it with some sort of commentary about the music itself. As she organized her thoughts, Billy made a sound of consideration, as if this was a fair point.

“Banging or dying, sometimes both in the same song.”

Rebecca looked at him. His eyes, gray like thick fog, were trained on the top of her head. He pointed to his own in indication. “Your hair’s pretty wild right now. Got kind of an alfalfa thing going on.”

“Ugh.” She pawed at it, tried to smooth it down. The offending cowlick sprung up again in the breeze. “This haircut is such a pain in the ass. All it takes is one stiff wind and poof, Albert Einstein.”

Billy tucked his cigarette between his lips to free his hands and reached for her. He combed his fingertips through the short, fine clip of her brown hair, brushed it back down against her forehead. “Nah. It looks good. Even when you’ve got the whole unicorn thing going on. Gets your attention… here.” He moved his hand; he touched the tip of a finger just under her eye, on the widest part of her cheekbone. “Not that they need help.”

Rebecca was stunned into a bashful silence. From the far wall behind them, the sudden sound of driving nails; _wham-wham-wham-wham_. They both blinked in unison. The loud, lurid sound of a woman’s performative moan muffled through the plaster, and Rebecca’s face crumpled in on itself in a comical wince with her tiny, pointed nose wrinkled in distaste. Billy’s eyes rolled skyward and he shook his head.

“I think she’s faking it.” Rebecca leaned in and whispered, conspiratorial.

Billy’s drag of smoke caught in his throat, choked with a sudden laugh. “You think?”

They sat on the windowsill in silence. The muffled cries and dull thumps carried on; the air between them, just a moment ago so warm and affable that Rebecca had assumed he was working up the opening to lean in for a kiss dropped to a sudden, awkward distance. Billy didn’t seem bothered, but her face pinkened, set alight from within by desperate embarrassment.

“So… I’m… uh… I’m going to go take a shower before the goth bridgade uses up all the hot water,” Rebecca gestured to the bathroom with the point of both of her index fingers.

He took a drag from the remaining nub of his smoke, crushed it against the brick wall beside him, then flicked it over the railing onto the sidewalk below. “Have fun.”

She climbed out of the window without further comment, retreated to the bathroom set against the back wall, and shut the door.

The slamming against the far wall continued and Billy stared at it, unimpressed.

“Thanks, dickbags.” He mumbled under his breath.

~

Rebecca took longer than she needed to. The only other alternative was to return to the room and its streaks of neon lights and the warm, close confusion that lived in its dusty corners, breathed against her with the very intention of the untoward. She thought. Thought too much, too little, but all bent towards the direction of him touching her face.

_It was innocent. Wasn’t it? No, no it wasn’t. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Mother knows best, right? The chair doesn’t look that uncomfortable._

When she emerged in a huge t-shirt that hit her at mid-thigh and not much else, he looked at her in a way that was half surprise and half amusement.

“You forgot something.”

“I did?” Rebecca looked around.

Billy nodded, indicated her bare legs with a point. “Pants.”

“Don’t worry, your honor is safe. There’s basketball shorts under here.” She lifted the shirt, surely meant to indicate the green cotton shorts that barely fell a handful of inches below the juncture of her thigh and her hip. The inadvertent flash of skin, a strip of her flat stomach, was distracting enough that he couldn’t have told you the color of the garment if you’d asked him. Give a man two years in jail and he was indistinguishable from the Amish, apparently.

“Oh no, not my honor.” Billy pushed past her, and Rebecca stopped him.

“There’s only one towel,” she said, and offered it to him. He took it in a slow, confused way. “Here. I tried to squeegee off a little before I used it so hopefully it’ll still work.”

Billy hung the towel over his shoulder and shut himself away in the bathroom.

Rebecca laid down on her side, facing the technicolor sprawl outside the window. A soft patter of rain started again, and in another circumstance, it would have been enough to lull her into a quiet, peaceful sleep. Her nerves were tensed, risen to her skin; she was acutely aware of everything, the shift of the stiff bedsheet over the bare skin of her legs, the gentle ruffle of a breeze against her cheek. Her stomach was tumble of anticipatory discomfort. She tried to sleep, pulled the sheet up around her face and closed her eyes; she would have time while he was busy to rest away the strange pressure, and let cooler heads prevail tomorrow.

The shower jets shut off, and her eyes flew open. Rebecca always underestimated the amount of time men took cleaning up—they had much less to do, that was true—but it seemed extremely short, even for that.

Billy clicked off the bedside lamp and laid down on the far edge of the bed, the springs compressing under his weight. He jostled a touch, searching for a comfortable position, and then was still. Rebecca couldn’t see him, couldn’t tell if he was facing her or away.

After a moment: “Billy?”

“Mmph,” he muffled, into his pillow.

Rebecca turned onto her opposite side. He was turned away from her; she studied the broad ridges of muscle across his shoulders and back, the dark, damp sheaf of his hair laid across the pillow, exposing the flat, strong plane of the back of his neck. He was wearing one of those thin white tank tops—wife beaters, some people called them, though she’d always found the name gross. His tattoo was missing, surgically removed if she had to guess, such a huge part of his person only a year ago, now replaced with only clean, tan skin. Rebecca was struck with the sudden idea of a fox, its paw stuck in a trap, having to gnaw off its own limb to escape and live another day.

_I wonder what other parts of yourself you’ve had to leave behind just to keep going?_

“I really liked your band,” she said, “it was nice getting to listen to them with you. And… thanks for going so far out of your way for me.”

It took him a moment—Rebecca thought he’d fallen asleep. Billy rolled onto his back, the mattress bumping and squeaking beneath the weight of his body. “Glad you liked ‘em. I figure we’ve both got some closure due… not a big deal.”

Rebecca nodded, one side of her face still against the pillow. “I think we could both use some.”

It hung in the air. She didn’t realize how it sounded until he looked aside to her without moving his head. His silence was tense, the silence of searching for the correct thing to say and coming up empty repeatedly. It would have been a perfect opportunity to touch him, to reach out and pull him to her, but something heavy and unsure stayed her hand.

“Are we talking about the drive, or are we talking about something else?”

The world seemed a little closer and tighter and a little more electric all at once. “It all kind of chains together in my brain. But… I guess it’s a little bit of both.”

Billy’s eyes flickered across her face, tried to scare out some sort of meaning he wasn’t asking for with his words.

“Same to you,” his voice was quiet, contemplative. “We make a good team.”

Her nerves braced, prepared for the warm brush of a touch, initiating some kind of contact. None came, and she was seized by a deep, confusing throe of disappointment.

They stayed separated as a similarly-charged pair of magnets; the strip of white bedsheet between them became a demilitarized zone neither dared trespass.

“You should sleep,” Billy spoke first. “It’s a long haul to Indiana, tomorrow.”

“Right,” Rebecca nodded, offered him a smile. “Goodnight.”

It wasn’t long until his eyes were closed and his chest rose and fell in the slow cadence of sleep.

_A gentleman, huh._

Rebecca settled down for a sleep of her own, with only her longing and the crushed-velvet opulence of the singer’s voice in her head for company.


	3. Raccoon City

_Rebecca hit the door with what remained of her injured shoulder and ran down the long flight of stairs._

_The staircase was little more than a glorified aluminum ladder welded between the wall and a banister of cheap steel. Ahead and down, further away on the silver grating of a catwalk, lie a body on its back, limbs outstretched in limp surrender. One of the body’s feet hung over the side of the platform, boot and half a shin submerged in rushing water. Enough for something large and lurking and hungry to grab and drag. She yelled his name, but no sound came from her mouth. She knew who he was, and in dreams, her brain screamed louder than her voice ever could._

_Rebecca descended into a huge room, dark save for dimmed conical spreads of light from industrial fixtures hung over forked catwalks bolted to either wall. A waterfall roar pushed against her eardrums, made it hard to think. Mist clung damp and spongy on her skin, an angry spittle thrown from the bucking water. The air she sucked into pumping lungs smelled green, the textured, lurking green of mildew between panels, mold caked in circular patches. She descended the stairs so fast she felt she was flying, sure she was going to trip and land hard on the way down. She took the last four stairs in a leap, hit the slick metal lattice in an awkward crouch. She sprinted as fast as her legs would allow, the soles of her boots reporting off the metal like ricochets. She called his name again._

_Rebecca slid to his side, landed on her knees. It hurt; bruised those knees in wide gouges of violet and yellow, a fact she didn’t recognize until long away from this place. She dragged him away from the water, marveled at how heavy his body was. All of his limbs were accounted for. The core of his body was still sealed, internal organs in place. She shook him. His eyes remained closed, dark hair disheveled and caked with sodium-crystal silt clung to the sides of his face like strands of kelp._

_His chest wasn’t moving._

_Panic unfurled from a place deep in her stomach and bloomed into her chest, pushing rational thought and consequences aside. She checked for his pulse, just under his jaw—her fingers trembled, her own heart a panicked bass-drum kick in the cavern of her chest. She tried twice, feeling for the gentle throb of blood. Her fingertips found only skin as cold and wet as fish scales.  
_

_“No,” Rebecca said. She laced her fingers together, one hand atop the other, placed them against his chest, and pushed in deep, rhythmic jerks so hard she thought she heard his ribs grind. His limp body jostled by degrees while she pushed, but did not move. When she reached the count of thirty, she grabbed him by his forehead and the sharp angle of his chin, tilted his head back, and blew into his mouth. His chest inflated by an inch under her breath, then fell still once more._

_As her efforts continued—three rounds of this, a lost cause to anyone but the most stubborn or the most heartbroken—her hope began to dwindle. After four, she listened again for his breath. Only the sound of gently rushing water._

_“You said we were a team.” Her voice squeaked. The world split into wet, trembling prisms and she swiped at her eyes in helpless frustration. “You don’t get to leave me here all by myself. You don’t get to leave.”_

_Rebecca pumped against his chest again, tilted his head up, and breathed into his lungs. This time, his eyes flew open with an urgency that scared her, made her topple onto her backside. He rolled away from her and coughed up a bubbling blast of hot, acidic water. He drew back a great, desperate gasp that at once sounded like pain and like the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard._

_Rebecca sat him up, his weight propped against her body while he wheezed and coughed. When he could breathe again, could focus again, the first thing he said was her name._

  
Rebecca awoke to a howling bluster of wind. It dashed drops of rain against the windowpane, tapped like thousands of fingers against the glass. 

Sometime during the night Billy turned and now faced her in his sleep. His face, sharp and hard as if hewn out of disapproving granite, relaxed as he rested. The premature lines of stress around his eyes softened under the rainbow hum of lights. He looked so young it took her by surprise; Rebecca thought she could see in that face what he’d looked like before life had carved at him with deep knife-strokes of constant tension. Calm and composed like the still water of a lake, no pain bubbling just under the surface. 

Rebecca watched as his chest moved. One of his hands lay on the juncture of the pillows, long callous-scarred fingers curled into a loose fist. She moved his hand and drew close, rested her own against the wall of his chest. It rose and fell under her fingers in the slow rhythm of sleep, his breaths clear and soft as morning. 

She closed her eyes and let her heart come back down to a regular rhythm. She’d had this nightmare once or twice before. Often, she wouldn’t be able to resuscitate him. Sometimes she’d remain trapped with his lifeless body; sometimes he’d wake and chase her down, pin her under his weight and tear her flesh from her bones. But this time, his chest was moving.

When Rebecca opened her eyes, Billy was squinting at her. He blinked in the languid confusion of experiencing something so strange it rendered him unsure on which side of dreams or wakefulness he’d found himself.

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca’s hand retracted like she’d been shocked. A bloom of embarrassment fogged hot under her skin. “I just—I had a dream, and…”

He listened and watched her. 

“…and it felt so real that I guess… I was worried, so I wanted to make sure your… that you were…” Her touch had been born of compassion and concern. Explaining it sounded nonsensical as she heard herself speak the words. She realized a beat too late the zone between them, so carefully erected and maintained, had been breached by her touch.

His retaliation was gentle, the warmth of his hand upon the curve of her waist. His fingers moved slowly, opening and closing against the fabric of her shirt. His eyes were tired, but the confusion was gone. His attention wasn't on her words, but the mouth that formed them, then back to her eyes.

“…I-I guess I’m just glad you’re okay.” She finished.

“So I was right.” A touch of amusement, his voice thick with sleep. He smiled, easy compared to her own stumbling. “You do dream about me.”

Rebecca opened her mouth to speak but found only a disbelieving scoff. 

“ _That’s_ what you got from this?” She shoved his hand away. The sudden urge to snatch the pillow from beneath her head and give him a hearty thwack with it was profound. A good hard smack in the slats always had a way of correcting a man’s supposed roguish charm. “You’re _such_ a jerk.”

Billy laughed, a quiet sound like water over stones. “Don’t be embarrassed. What happened to me being a gentleman?”

Rebecca gave him an exasperated look with a slight tilt of her head. Even in her frustration, a small smile tried to sneak in. 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, with the responsible air of a woman who had rescued the conversation from a detour into the absurd. She closed her eyes, wiggled in place, and pulled the bedsheet up around her chin. “But if you’re done making fun of me, I’m going back to sleep now.”

“Uh huh.”

Billy thought about saying something else to tease her. Then he looked at her, and fell into distracted silence. She was beautiful like a doll, or a girl from a classical painting; symmetrical and soft with a small upturned nose and a full mouth that curled, catlike, at the corners. Pale with a dusting of tawny freckles and high points of color on her cheeks that flared a dark, ruddy pink when she was upset or afraid. The kind of beautiful you saw on a wall or a shelf, meant to be viewed and cherished, but not touched.

Though she was beautiful, it wasn’t just how she appeared. It was the warmth you could feel by standing close to her—it lit her from within like a paper lantern. A lantern didn’t glow because the fire made it pretty, but because people needed its light against the dark. That was what made her beautiful. What drew people to her. 

What drew Billy to her. The world was cold, unforgiving, judgmental. But Rebecca felt like warmth.

“What was it about?” He asked, the lilt of teasing discarded for a soft seriousness that sounded less like conversation and more like care. “Your dream.”

Her eyes opened, heavy lashes fluttering. Her gaze was directed at their feet. 

“The water plant… you know. Back there.” An involuntary swallow down the slender column of her throat. “The bones.”

“Get them a lot?”

“Not often… but over the last week they’ve been… bad.”

“Because of the trial?”

Her silence told him this wasn’t the case.

“…or because of me?”

Rebecca blinked and looked up to him. Billy had no way to be aware of it then, but the earnest wideness of those eyes—green like the leaves of a clover even under the haze of color that tried to subdue them—was an image he’d remember until he had no more memories to recall. 

“No.” She reached out and touched him once more, her fingertips against the side of his face. “You make them better.” There was no way to fight someone’s thoughts, of course. But in that moment if he’d had a way to bloody his knuckles against the dreams themselves, he’d fight them for the rest of his life. 

“Goodnight.” She said. “Again.”

Rebecca was a genius. A scientist. Billy didn’t have to be, under the feather-light brush of her fingers, to know what was going on here. The fibers of his muscles coiled and his breath hitched, ready for movement. Not so long ago this would have been a slam dunk. A sure thing. He would have already moved, pulled her close. Maybe buried his face in the juncture of her throat and her shoulder to be close to that warmth, to feel her pulse beating like the wings of a moth. 

But this was now. A now that stalked like a curse, outfitted with an executioner’s cowl of fears and insecurities. A now where trust and the vulnerability it carried intermingled with sorrow so deep it lived in his bones, pumped fear into his bloodstream like the cells that kept him alive. That fear had kept him alive, too. Some days he was unable to tell them apart. 

With both effort and regret, Billy stayed his hands. Those hands wanted so badly to touch her that he could already imagine what her skin felt like, how the line of her body would fit under them.

She dreamed about him, too.

_You make them better._

_~_

The morning came in a thick fog of bright orange sunrise too warm for comfort. The humidity woke Billy from a thin and superficial sleep; with recognition belated by the mist over his brain, he realized Rebecca’s forehead touched the bare skin of his shoulder, the short, fine slip of her mouse-brown hair pinned between them. This was nothing new: Billy had spent his entire adult life crammed into less than graceful sleeping arrangements with friends, subordinates, superiors, and total strangers—he himself had ended up as the “little spoon” to a few rather large Marines who mindlessly reached for whatever warm body was beside them, perhaps dreaming of someone they’d left stateside. This was the first time he decided waking them could wait a few minutes. That “few minutes” ended up being the better part of an hour, until she awoke on her own.

They showered and dressed for the day, checked out, and were back on the road by 9 am. Somewhere between the flat farmland and the rolling hills of the Midwest, Rebecca’s phone beeped for her attention, muffled and buried in her purse.

“Uh oh.” Billy said. “Paging Doctor Chambers.”

Rebecca gave him one of those weary, vaguely amused looks, and turned down the radio. When she read the digital display on the phone’s thin metal body, she sighed. “I’ve gotta take this. Hang on.” She unfolded the phone and hit the “accept call” button. “Hey, Jacob!” A pause. “Ah—yeah. Yeah, I—”

Whoever it was on the other end of the line interrupted her. Billy wasn’t sure what the guy was saying, but he could make out a few words: _irresponsible_ was one. _Complaint_ was another. Whoever this Jacob was, his undergraduate studies had neglected to include basic respect, it seemed. Billy kept his eyes on the road and his mouth shut.

“Look, I have it. It’s done. I swear I’ll be back in time. None of the hotels have AOL, so—listen. Listen to me—” she took in a stilling breath. “ _Jacob_. Hey. Listen to me, okay? It is already done, ready to go. We have a week. That’s plenty of time. I—”

Another Charlie Brown scribble of conversation on the other end. Rebecca’s tone was patient but edging towards exasperation, like she was talking to an unruly child. 

“I get that you’re anxious about this, but it’s good. Okay? Yes. Yes, I promise. Yes—I—okay. I’m going to hang up now, okay? Okay, bye. Bye, Jac—okay. _Bye_.” 

Rebecca let her head fall back against the seatrest. The wind ruffled her hair. 

“Can you do me a favor?” She asked.

“Sure.”

“Drive us into that ditch you promised?”

That made him laugh. “Trouble in paradise?”

Rebecca wrinkled her nose in prim distaste. “Ugh. No, nothing like that. He’s my… well… okay, so, in college? You have these people called PAs, and they…”

She went on to explain without prompting. Billy stared at her in the rear view mirror. When she realized this, she quieted. 

“…but you’ve… probably been to college yourself, I guess?” She said, sheepish.

“Maybe.” A slight rankle of offense was clear in his voice. He gave it a moment to pass and decided he found it hard to blame her for not accurately filling in blanks he’d outright obscured, defended like a border pockmarked with artillery scars. “Jacob sounds like an understanding guy.”

She wanted to ask questions; he could tell from the cadence of her breath. “He’s not usually like this with me. He’s just… kind of… he gets anxious about group projects because he wants to look good to the faculty.”

“Don’t miss group projects.”

“So, what did you study?”

It was a harmless question with a harmless answer. With a breed of dread, Billy realized he’d opened the door for it, invited it to come right on in. One question would lead to two, would lead to a whole yarn he’d rather not unravel. He wanted to tell her—wanted to ask about her, wanted to answer her questions. Not for the first time, he considered the fact none of those answers would be good. 

_Not good, or not good enough for her?_

“Rather not talk about it,” he said, “if it’s all the same to you.”

She looked suitably abashed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

After a protracted silence, Billy assumed she was embarrassed, and asked her a question—something about stopping for food. When the silence persisted, he glanced over. She had fallen asleep, and stayed that way until they crossed the border into Indiana. Billy woke her when they were half an hour out, shook her by one of her slender shoulders.

  
“We’re almost there,” he said.

Rebecca squinted, yawned. “To where?”

“To Raccoon City.”

The name skirted over the surface of Rebecca’s brain like the cold, light skim of an unwanted touch. She had grown up just North of Raccoon City, in Indianapolis. Her hometown was orders of magnitude larger than Raccoon, and she had spent her school days taking day trips to cities even larger still—Chicago, Cincinnati. The name _Raccoon City_ once signaled optimism. The bright, cool blast of new beginnings, the mantle of adulthood, heavy and proud. That lightness was now struck through with a dark, viscous fear that made her skin crawl. They intermingled in Rebecca’s brain, fighting for control of her memories.

As strong as the emotions were, Rebecca’s sense of duty was stronger. 

“Do you think I should…” Rebecca’s voice trailed off, thoughtful. “They gave us… little things, at the Capitol. Pens, and little brochures for the lunch specials and things. Maybe I can leave one. To show…” she sighed, discouraged. “No, that’s dumb.”

“Mm. No, I think that’s a good idea.” She blinked up to him. “You were there, fighting for them. They were there with you. Right?”

“Well, well, well. Is that sentimentality? I never knew you were such a romantic.”

Billy shook his head, readjusted his baseball cap. “That’s another _very_ strong word.”

The grass crept in a dragging march from green to yellow to wilted brown to nothing, only gravel and clay-colored dirt. The car’s struts squeaked and rumbled over the uneven terrain, as if they too were trembling for what they’d find. Rebecca placed her hands in her lap, willed them to stop trembling as they crested the shallow hill. The silence in the car became heavier, like moisture in the air before a rain.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Rebecca said, suddenly gripped with dread and regret. “I—we could just turn around, you know?”

“Do you want to?”

“…I don’t know.”

Billy’s hand, warm and dry and rough, covered hers and pulled it to the center console between them. Rebecca squeezed his fingers and held on.

The hill ended in a gentle slope. The newsprint-gray sky overhead buckled in tumbles of clouds and underneath it there was nothing—flat land as far as the eye could see, five inches or so of the smooth dirt having been dug up, leaving a massive depression. A desolate enormous _nothing_ where there should have been _something_ —some hint, some clue, some idea that not long ago—a city had existed here. It hadn’t just been a fever dream. Now there was only dirt and wind and sky to replace the stores, the school-children, the churches and the buses full of people. 

In the immediate distance stood an oval stone on one of its wide sides, glistening in the dim light atop a platform. Beside it, a bulletin board the size of the side of trailer, every available inch of its tan corkboard covered with photographs, letters, stickers, and other keepsakes that fluttered in the fitful summer wind. The board’s base was flocked with the dry rattles of dead flower bouquets, buried under froths of new blooms wrapped in bright cellophane in a Mardi Gras march of colors—purple, green, gold, pink, blue. Scores of tiny American flags were planted in the soil. Billy parked the car in an invisible spot, sidelong. He turned the key and the engine’s obedient rumbling cut, purred itself to sleep. Rebecca’s eyes were drawn to the wide-open space; the mountain range in the distance stood like the spine of a giant, unobscured by buildings for the first time in her life. Her throat was dry, her chest tight.

“You going to leave something?” He reminded her, gently.

“Y… yeah. Yeah, hang on.” She rooted in her purse, unsure what she was looking for, blindly pushing objects around with shaking hands. She finally settled on a pen, grass green, emblazoned with the white logo of her hotel.

“This is all I’ve got,” she said, and looked to him for assurance.

“That’ll do fine, I think.”

Rebecca opened the car door and approached the monument, light-headed from nerves. Her feet moved by themselves. The monument was much larger than she had anticipated, hewn from glittering black stone polished to a gloss. Words were carved in its face, bold and clear.

**From September 27, 1998 - October 1, 1998, the brave citizens of Raccoon City**   
**endured a bioterror attack. The United States Government designated the attack**   
**uncontainable and detonated a bomb at its site in order to stop the spread.**

**Over 100,000 people died.**   
**There are 63 known survivors.**

**This monument is dedicated to those who died, to those who survived, and to those**   
**who assisted the survivors. We will never forget your sacrifices.**

**1999**

The scuffs of Billy’s bootheels approaching from behind brought Rebecca’s attention back to present time—to the wind, the moisture in the air. Rebecca wanted to say something. In books, the heroine always had something insightful and noble and solemn to say at times like these. The words wouldn’t come: they sat stubborn at the base of her sternum like a knot. Billy removed his hat in a gesture of respect—without it his long dark hair tousled in the strengthening breeze. 

“One hundred thousand…” Rebecca’s voice belonged to someone else, reedy and weak, stolen away on wind. She felt like she’d fall into the sky, sucked in by the vast, churning nothing above them, the clouds swirling down like a giant, reaching hand. _You aren’t supposed to be here. Nothing is supposed to be here._

Billy listened. His silence always felt like an invitation; a warm, breathing thing, waiting to wrap itself around whatever idea or emotion she presented to him and rest with it, keep it safe. They stood in that silence for a long, long time, only the voice of the wind and the scrapes of paper to fill the void.

“It feels like I should be proud,” she said, finally. “Of what I did. But I’m not.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I fought with it, you know? Surviving.” Her eyes fixed on the number. 63. Traced its curls and brasswork as the world grew blurry and wet. “I survived because I ran. My friends… they stayed to fight. But I didn’t. Because I was scared. What I saw… what _we_ saw… I didn’t know how to… I should have been here. Maybe I could have changed something, you know?”

Softly. “That why you didn’t come back?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t do it by myself. They stayed. But I didn’t. I’m one of those sixty-three, but I don’t think…” she shook her head. “This monument is for them. Not for me. I guess this is me asking for their forgiveness, too.”  
  
“Sixty-four,” Billy said, and touched her shoulder. “You weren’t by yourself. And you’re not now.”

Rebecca looked at him. The genuine concern on his face, the flicker of his eyes over hers, was touching; it reminded her of another time, not so long ago, where he’d pulled her from something ominous. Always pulling her back. He watched as she tied the pen with a slip of ribbon from one of the decorations on the sign.

She took a breath in.

“I know it’s not much,” she said, “and I know I did it too late. But I fought for you. And I promise to keep fighting, the best way I know how.”

The pen dangled and spun in the desolate wind, clacked against the wooden frame. She stepped back… and felt lightness. Felt the relief of having completed something long postponed, its weight suddenly no longer heavy against her shoulders, the curve of her spine.  
  
“Thank you. And… I’m glad we came here together. I think this would have felt incomplete if I was alone. You know?”

“Yeah.” He looked down and blinked, his brows slightly furrowed. His chest rose and fell in the unmistakable rhythm of words prepared for, but denied at the last moment. Raindrops, cold and sharp and heavy, pelted the dirt in dark circles. They pattered against the cellophane bouquet wrappings in a Morse-code rattle. “Don’t want to rush you, but the storm’s following us. We should get to higher ground until it passes.”

Rebecca nodded, wiped under her eyes with the edges of her index fingers. “Right. Right. Good idea.”

Billy placed his ballcap on her head, the inner band of it worn soft from use, and tugged the bill down to her eyes. To her questioning expression, he said, “Gotta protect the cut, right? No Albert Einstein in my car.”

Rebecca couldn’t help but laugh. He smiled.

“I’ll be behind you, you go on.”

Rebecca nodded, crossed her arms across her slender torso, and walked away to where the Buick waited for them. Billy glanced around for her. Satisfied she was gone, he walked the few steps to the bulletin board, and parted a thin sheaf of overlapped photos with the tips of his fingers. He reached for one on the bottom of the pile, partly-obscured by a Polaroid of a man with a mustache. He knew exactly where to look for it. 

The part of the picture unprotected from the weather by the photos layered on top of it was faded from the sun and the snow and the rain, but when he lifted them, the picture of Rebecca in her collared police uniform, smiling and bright-eyed, was surprisingly untouched. It was a small part of a newsprint clipping, black and white, no bigger than the last two knuckles of his index finger. He couldn’t find any others; she wasn’t in the news in December, when he’d placed it here.

Billy pulled the photo down from where it was secured to the board with a bent staple. A small scrap of its thin border remained pinned to the cork. He crumpled the photo, shoved it into the pocket of his jeans, then jogged to the car after her, head bowed against the rain. 

  
~

  
A doe stepped down the hillside on dainty hooves, knelt, and laid its ivory chin on the ground underneath a wide tree. Two fauns huddled close within the circle of its body, long ears twitching against the sound of the downpour. After a twenty-minute ride over the uneven terrain, Billy had found a cement outcropping meant for RVs and campers in times past, protected by the heavy bows of a copse of trees. There were no campers now. 

A great shroud of mist rose from the rolling hills below, and Rebecca sat on the hood of his car. He leaned against it beside her. 

“Feels so strange, being back here.” Rebecca’s voice was distant; it matched the look in her eyes. “It feels like so much time has passed.” 

“You’ve been busy.” A gentle nudge against her arm, something hard and angular. She glanced down to where he held a silver-toned flask out for her. The glint of the metal caught her eye, drew her attention in a line to his wrist. Thin slices of scar tissue, faint pink semi-circular gash marks wound around the strong, lean muscle and knobby bone on the outside of his wrist. They were long since healed, blended in with his skin well enough that she hadn’t noticed them until she was butted up against him, her eyes on his hand. If the dark dusting of the hair on his arms hadn’t been missing from those spots, she might have overlooked their presence.

“What’s this?” She asked. 

“It’s a flask. You drink out of it.” He looked satisfied with himself. He always did after he made a stupid joke at her expense. “It’s Jack Daniels. Have some. It’s good stuff.”

Just the smell of alcohol, rich and strong and acerbic, pitched Rebecca’s stomach into a slow, nauseous roll. She frowned, but took a healthy pinch anyway; she barely swallowed it before she started coughing. “Oh my God, that is vile.” 

“You get used to it.” Billy lit a cigarette from a pack in his pocket. It smelled vaguely like peppermint beneath the choke of tobacco and ash. “Didn’t really get a chance to look at this place before. It’s nice.”

“Nice” was an understatement. Rebecca had always loved the Arklay Mountains, in particular their forests; from the time she was an infant they’d been a fertile cradle, teeming with enough possibilities and questions to feed a young scientific mind for life. Herbs of all kinds specific to the area grew here, herbs she’d spend her childhood sketching in books with curled corners from thumbing, remembering their properties and uses and Latin names. Riots of climbing kudzu and stands of mighty pines, bowing branches like doorways into some other world, the delicate peppered smelled of geranium and russet dirt. Sunlight dappled through the leaves every shade of green imaginable, like magic. But as she’d learned—not all magic was good magic, and Arklay’s magic had twisted into something vile and depraved, a manic murderer’s grin where there used to be a smile. She used to be able to spend hours at a time here, get lost for so long her parents would yell when she returned after dark dirt-stained and happy, but now the forest itself seemed to breathe with malevolence, like it was watching them, waiting for the correct time to strike.

Rebecca shrugged off a shiver despite the summer warmth. “Do they have forests like this where you’re from?”

He said nothing and flicked the ash from his smoke.

“Right. Sorry. I keep forgetting.”

“Mostly desert brush. Beaches. Stuff like that.” Billy’s discomfort was palpable. It choked the cadence of his speech into short, rapid-fire thoughts. He looked nervous and it presented as a rapid blink, an unsure twist of his mouth. “From Cali—San Jose. Was born in Hawaii, though. On base in Oahu.”

Rebecca was unsure if his tongue was loosened by alcohol or sympathy. Her brain, starved for data and information, seized upon the fact with reverence and relief. She began packing it into compartments and timelines where it made sense, and felt pride—the pride of being charged with keeping something priceless and seldom handled.

 _“On base”,_ she thought, _he comes from a military family. No wonder he doesn’t like to think about what happened. I can’t imagine how his family must have reacted. If he even still had one after the news came down._

“Not trying to be a prick,” he continued, easier now, “I don’t think I’m too good to talk about this stuff. It doesn’t help to think about it so I just… don’t. Try not to, anyway.”

“I think it matters,” Rebecca offered. “It’s a part of you, so it’s important.”

The look he gave her was unreadable; it might have been consideration, unease, or both. She wasn’t sure.

“Guess so,” he said. “Sorry.”

“So… Vermont’s a big change,” she offered him a smile. She wasn’t sure if the lightness she felt was from the sudden release of emotions or the alcohol. 

“Snow.” He took the change of topic with a grateful leap. “Lots of snow. Nobody ever tells you how heavy that stuff is ‘til you gotta shovel it yourself. Like moving rocks. One of my neighbors saw me trying to clear it off my car and had to teach me how.”

The absurd image of huge, eternally tough Billy dressed in a snowsuit with his face wrapped in a scarf, jabbing a shovel at piles of snow like a man might jab at a lion with a chair’s legs sent Rebecca into a peal of laughter. Billy snuffed the cigarette under the sole of his boot. “Two drinks and you’ve already got the giggles, huh?”

“I might still be drunk from night before last. You don’t know. Apparently we were doing _tequila_ shots.”

He shook his head. “Shooting tequila and Jack is too much for you? You’re weird. Pretty, but weird.” 

Rebecca took a long swig from the metal flask, then passed it back. The more she drank the easier it went down. The easier it went down the easier the words came up. 

“You just called me pretty," Billy wasn’t sure if that was innocent cheer he heard in her voice, teasing, or both. “Are you flirting with me?” 

He responded without a moment’s hesitation. "Do you want me to?”

“You are a gentleman, after all. Asked permission…”

He thought to say something smooth, something to poke fun at her obvious sentimentality, something that would easily flow into drawing her close. The words hadn’t had time to formulate when Rebecca leaned up and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. She lingered there a moment then retreated. 

“…And you waited for me to kiss you, first.” 

Once it was spoken, it became real fast as a pistol shot. Billy tossed the flask away to the side without looking, an afterthought. His hands were on her before it hit the dirt. 


	4. Raccoon City II

_Rebecca pushed the door open with the muzzle of her pistol, the slender geometry of her shoulders tensed. Rusty hinges creaked with an upward inflection, questioning._

_“We’ve got company,” her voice wavered, but less than it did a day ago. Much less._

_“You need help?”_

_Her boots scuffled against the floor. She cracked off one shot that echoed through the room, the hallway. Bedsprings squeaked under a sudden drop of weight. A voice sounded thoughtful—hmmm—and then the air was still again._

_Billy laughed. “Guess that’s a no.”_

_His back to hers, Billy cast suspicious, weary glances down the corridor from behind the iron peg-sights of his shotgun. Only the dim flickering crimson of an emergency light spun against the cement walls, darkened in spots from a row of leaking horizontal pipes. Billy watched the glistening things on the floor, green and scaled like alligators. The hallway still smelled like gunpowder, gunpowder and the blood soaked into the floor, splashed against the walls. The things were still, stout muscular bodies piled in a lifeless heap. He watched them anyway._

_He was bone-tired, the kind of tired that made your eyes water and play tricks on you. The kind of tired that inspired stupid mistakes. His feet ached and his chest felt full of gunpowder, gritty and swollen, small pangs of pain every time he breathed. Every now and again he’d cough and taste mildew in the back of his throat, in his sinuses, like someone had shoved an old towel down his gullet while he’d been knocked out. His gun was only a few pounds but his arms and the big muscles of his upper back ached from its weight. They had proven their toughness, he and Rebecca, but even the toughest machines broke down and spit smoke when overused and denied routine maintenance. They desperately needed some kind of break. Some kind of reprieve._

_Billy squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, and looked again. Still empty._

_“I think we’re clear,” Rebecca’s high, soft voice was tentative. “I’m going to sweep. Ready?”_

_Billy nodded, with a quiet sound of understanding. Her voice put a little steel in his spine; he stood straighter, back to the room._

_“Careful.”_

_Her footsteps receded, light and balletic. Billy watched the hallway while she made noise of shuffling plastic and dragging metal, small breaths of effort while she knelt to check under cots, the scrape of rings against a curtain rod._

_“Clear,” she said. Her footsteps returned to him. “It’ll be just us and the ladies, if you want to see our friend outside.”_

_They’d been doing it this way like clockwork. Rebecca dispatched the slower ones with her trusty nine millimeter, cleared the rooms while Billy watched the way they’d come, ready to jump in if she found herself overwhelmed or her chamber empty. And while he had to jump in often enough that leaving her alone wasn’t an option, what she lacked in combat prowess, she made up for in raw nerd power—her brain danced through the never-ending march of number problems and limerick puzzles with a speed that reminded him of those people who speed-ran Rubik’s Cubes, twisting and clicking the colored tiles with deft fingers, always thinking five or six steps ahead of everyone else. Even fatigued, she was always taking in new information, spinning it, trying it in new places until something fit. Often, she’d unlocked a door or hit a buzzer before Billy had even defined what sort of question they were being asked._

_Billy’s work was much more straightforward. He waded in with his fists and his elbows, slammed heads against walls when panic overtook her. He moved heavy objects and served as a human step-stool when she needed to reach something high off the floor. More than once when she stood with the gritty, wet soles of her boots on his shoulders and his hands on her ankles, he wondered precisely what stupid decisions he’d made in his life to bring him here. At first she’d resisted even getting near him—excuse me, eyes forward, watch your hands and don’t try anything funny—but now she accepted his physical help with a complete lack of suspicion that read more like breed of trust._

_It had been slow, cautious going—more cautious than he was used to—but he preferred cautious and alive to reckless and dead any day of the week, and he couldn’t shake the feeling they were getting close. To what, he wasn’t sure… but something big._

_Billy placed his gun on a nearby counter, the first time it left his hands in hours. Without it they felt empty, cramped, damp with sweat. The man’s body lay on one of the lower bunks, dressed in bloodstained mechanic’s overalls. He wasn’t too far gone, luckily; he must have recently turned, bitten once on the vital throbbing arteries of his inner forearm, and then stayed in his bed to recuperate or succumb. He probably wouldn’t fall apart when moved like some of the others. Probably._

_Billy hooked one arm around the man’s chest, grabbed the back of one of his pantlegs, hauled his weight to the hallway and flung him like a bouncer ejecting a rowdy patron. The corpse rolled stiff-limbed along the floor with an awkward scuff and landed against the juncture of the floor and wall, arms spread in what looked like a shrug._ Not cool _, his posture seemed to say,_ what the fuck’d I do to you, man?

_Billy closed the door and turned the deadbolt. He identified the nearest piece of heavy furniture—a metal dresser. With a grunt of effort, he half-lifted half-dragged it and wedged it against the door. Unsatisfied, he made for a leather sofa parked against the far wall. Rebecca pushed against its other end as he moved it, a gesture which was attentive, charitable, but entirely unnecessary. Once the barricade was in place, Billy turned to her and wiped the sweat from his upper lip. “Ladies?” He asked, his brain finally caught up now that the work was done._

_Rebecca jabbed a thumb toward a collection of magazine centerfolds taped to the gray cement wall—cinnamon-skinned women, shapely thighs and washboard stomachs caked with golden sand, clad in swimsuits that were less “suits” and more neon spools of dental floss. Normally this scenery would have been of interest. Billy was a red-blooded man of twenty-six, and it had been over a year—almost two—since he’d seen anything like it, real or printed on cold glossy paper. At this point tits were just a fond, oft-recalled memory, but he was exhausted and distracted, by both fear and the moving, breathing person in the room with him._

_A deep scrape ran along Rebecca’s chin and up one cheek, already knit into a scab. She smiled anyway, eyes bright and face cheerful behind a mask of caked dirt and dried, flaking blood. She lugged a heavy box onto one of the cots. It was gray plastic stamped with broken military-style lettering. Inside the box were stacks of red and brass shotgun shells, a roll of olive drab canvas shoved alongside as an afterthought. He recognized it immediately: a firearm maintenance kit._

_“Someone left you a present...” A lilt of song in the last word._

_“No shit,” Billy said, astonished. His last three shells were shoved in the pockets of his jeans, and he’d long since resigned himself to doling out beatings with the empty gun if no supplies presented themselves once they’d been spent._

_“They left a jug of water, too. It looks clean. Finally got a break.”_

_“You should scout more often. Looks like you’re a lucky charm.” It was an offhanded line, thoughtless, but it made her smile._

_“Since we’ve got some downtime, I can make us something to eat. I’ve only got MREs, but… I don’t think I can eat a whole one. You need more calories than I do.”_

_She was a terrible liar—her voice shook and she stumbled over her words. She had been running as long as he, in heavier gear. She had to be starving, but the empty banging of his own stomach didn’t allow him to refuse._

_“If you’ve got extra,” he said, “don’t let me put you out.”_

_“Okay. I’ll get it going if you want to clean up.”_

_They took turns washing their hands in a metal basin against one of the walls. Rebecca heated the food—a chicken and rice ration in a traditional plastic bag—with a flameless heater pack, and the smell brought Billy back to long sun-blasted days in the Afghani desert, field exercises in the soggy grassland outside of Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The force of the memories were disorienting. Sobering._

_They ate in silence, her ladylike and careful with dainty, plucking fingers, Billy swift and animal-graceless in comparison. The food hit his stomach and some of the shakes subsided—and then he felt her eyes on him._

_Billy looked up. Rebecca glanced away, as if he’d caught her doing something wrong. She took a drink from her canteen, maybe to appear casual and hide her embarrassment. A trickle of the juice, powdery orange stuff meant to replenish their electrolytes, leaked in a drop from the corner of her mouth. Billy was gripped with a sudden animal need to press his lips against that drop, against the mouth it ran from. As soon as the image appeared it left him, a spit of madness with no anchor in reality, a feverish side effect of his first contact with the opposite sex in... what was it? A year? Two? He couldn’t remember._

Fuck _, he thought, and shook his head._ **Fuck.**

_“I can’t help but think we’re getting close,” she wiped her mouth, sucked an errant swipe of sauce off the pad of her middle finger. He wasn’t sure when he’d last paid such close attention to anything._

_“Hopefully,” Billy accepted the canteen and took a guzzle. “If I never see another monkey in my life, I’ll be glad.”_

_Rebecca giggled. “They **have** had it out for you. Maybe you need a nickname?”_

_He stared at her, silently, like it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. Then after a moment, deadpan: “Baboon bruiser.”_

_Her giggles started again, a great shoulder-shaking flurry of them, one hand over her mouth. “That’s… that’s not funny.” She stopped herself, looked at him, and fell into another fit. Her laughter called him forward towards the distant, alien warmth of belonging, belonging like a human being might. “I think I’m getting delirious.”_

_“Primate puncher.”_

_“Stop!”_

_Billy passed her canteen back with one of his customary half-laughs. “You’re the one who suggested a nickname.”_

_The canteen’s weight didn’t leave his hand. Instead her fingers skimmed his arm. His skin prickled into goosebumps at her touch. Rebecca’s laughter stopped, summarily forgotten._

_“You’re bleeding…” She took the canteen, placed it down with a quiet thump against the floor at their feet. Her eyes stayed on his arm, and she turned it to survey the damage._

_In some melee or another, the steel cuff latched between the bone of Billy’s wrist and the spread of his hand had bitten against his skin deep enough to leave a series of crisscrossed wounds. The wounds trickled blood but didn’t appear serious—deeper than a cut you’d get from mishandling cardboard, not enough to need a bandage. Rebecca tugged on Billy’s outstretched arm, encouraged him to move closer. Though Billy doubted his need for medical attention, he didn’t doubt his need to move toward her._

_He shifted his hips. They touched at the their sides, humid and damp with sweat, the hard outer curves of their knees. The finer details of her face became clearer; a small beauty mark beneath her right eye like a cardinal star in the pale constellation of freckles scattered over her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Against the compact softness of her body, her hands on him and his eyes on her face, the need to kiss her didn’t seem so strange anymore._

_“Am I gonna live, Doc?” Quietly. It was the first time he’d used that name for her—the honorific for a medic attached to a unit of Marines. He didn’t call her Rebecca again until they would meet up the next summer. With a deeper instinct that never surfaced to reasoning, this was the moment she became **his** unit… and he hers. _

_“It’ll be touch and go for a while…” Rebecca said, and looked aside to him. Her voice, too, was quiet. Her gaze fluttered over his face but didn’t stay there, instead hovered at the comfortable, less personal hollow where the column of his throat met his chest. “Stay still. I’ll get it wrapped up.”_

_Though it was painful work, she was far more tender than the efficient, businesslike jerks of Navy Corpsmen, more careful than the hurried ministrations of a nurse or doctor. It wasn’t the way she looked at him that kept him close after she finished, but the way she didn’t look at him at all, sudden shyness poorly disguised as focus on her task._

_“Thanks,” Billy turned his wrist to test its mobility. The cuff jingled, unimpeded by the fresh layer of gauze. “Looks like I’ll survive.”_

_“You better,” she said, “you don’t get a ticket out of here while I’m still stuck. We’re a team, remember?”_

_“A damn good one.” He paused. “They got you, too. Hit me with some of your kit.”_

_Rebecca sat still and straight-backed, hands folded in a demure knot on her lap, and closed her eyes. He wiped her face with a pad of wetted gauze, held the short, sweaty fringe of her hair off of her forehead and cleaned the wounds on her face, down her throat. When he finished, she opened her eyes and smiled at him. “You’re not so bad a medic, yourself. Awfully gentle touch for such a tough guy.”_

_He smoothed her hair back down. Of their own volition, his fingers tried to drift to the delicate line of her jaw. “Can be gentle when I need to be.”_

_Her smile faded into an expression of quiet consideration. Her eyes traced over his face._

_With an effort Billy was unaware he possessed the energy for, he dropped his hand and looked away. “Maybe we should get some rest while we can. You supplied the chow, so I’ll take first watch.”_

_“Right,” Rebecca said. She nodded as if remembering herself, pulling herself back from somewhere she’d been lost. “Right. Good idea.”_

_She stood and moved to the bunk across the room, and for want of something else to look at, Billy picked up a novel from a nearby bedside table. He settled back against the cold cement of the wall and read the first page four times, unfocused. When he glanced up, Rebecca had already fallen asleep on her stomach, slender arms folded in a loop against the mattress, over her head. Only the sweaty shag of her hair, a sliver of her face and one closed eye were visible behind her shoulder._

_Billy wasn’t a Corpsman. He had no food, no supplies. What he did have was a deep, confusing need to make sure she was alright, to make sure he’d done all he could to ensure she’d make it out okay. After a moment, Billy went to her. He gently lifted her weapons from their holsters. She sighed but didn’t stir, sunken into a deep, trusting sleep. Satisfied he hadn’t woken her, he pulled the blanket bunched at the foot of the bed over her shoulders._

_Billy did what he knew how to: he sat in the low, oily light and field stripped her pistol, scrubbed and oiled, checked and re-checked. He loaded her magazines—something she’d had trouble with, her thumbs not yet strong or calloused enough to repeat the task without developing painful blisters. He let her sleep for four hours, though when she woke, he told her it was only two, as they’d agreed._

_And though the brightly colored centerfolds on the wall at her feet begged for Billy’s attention, every time he looked up his eyes returned to Rebecca, her short hair and long eyelashes and the way she held the room together._

  
~

  
Sounds were louder. The throaty call of singing birds. The pattering of raindrops on leaves. The rattle of tree boughs in the wind. The soft cadence of Rebecca’s breath wrapped around all of them, wrapped around the world.

Her lips were soft and plush, slicked with something smooth and rich that tasted like vanilla cake batter. The clean, delicate smell of her skin, the way her tongue touched his with a breed of timidity that melted into greed, warm hands that slid from his ribs to his throat. It all mingled, clouded Billy's mind like a toxin. 

Rebecca straightened her back. Their bodies pushed together, the fullness of her chest pressed against his. She caught his lower lip between sharp teeth and nipped it, pulled—Billy's blood rioted against its vessels and his groin immediately felt heavy, filled with liquid lead. The pressure there ached and raged, demanded purchase to push against. The basest programming of his brain screamed for him to grab, to crush her against him and kiss her until she pulled away for desperate gasps of air. To push her down flat onto the hood of his car, to bury his face in the juncture between her thighs and—

His hands twisted in the fabric of her jacket, knuckles gloved against her spine. He yanked her forward, squeezed her close. She didn’t seem to mind… but he did.

 _Fuck,_ he thought over and over again on a broken loop. _Fuck. **Fuck.** _

Rebecca drifted back, close enough he could still feel the heat from her skin. Her eyes were fogged and she blinked it away, forced herself to focus on his face. Her lips were swollen and red, familiar spots of color high and vital on her cheeks. 

“What’s wrong?” She asked. 

There were excuses Billy could give, all of them true. It had been a while. Years—considering how very slight she was, enough time to require a man recalibrate the level of restraint necessary. He'd carted heavier rucksacks on baton marches; if he slammed her down too hard, there might be some first aid involved.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” He said.  
  
To that, Rebecca laughed, a sound so far from what Billy was expecting that he wasn’t sure whether to be offended or assured. 

“Hurt me?” Where her voice was normally sweet and guileless there was a clever bleeding edge, almost sly. She leaned up again, wound her arms tighter around his neck to draw him near. “What makes you think it won’t be the other way around?”

She came out of nowhere with this sort of unexpected pushback every now and again, but today, _right now_ … it was different. The machinery of his brain lifted, switched tracks from concern and care to something that felt more feral, more willing, like he was watching it happen to someone else. 

Billy drummed his fingers against the hood of the car. “Sounds like you’re challenging me.”

“Do you want me to?” She said, pitching her voice into an imitation of a husky whisper. She looked very, _very_ pleased with herself.

“Alright,” he said. One good, solid yank and she was off the car, clung to him with all her limbs; she shrieked in surprise, smugness forgotten. He hauled her, one arm around her waist and the other under her, rounded the side of the car, opened the door to the backseat.

“What?” She demanded, giggling. “Put me _down_. I’m serious!”

“So am I.” He tossed her in. She bounced against the upholstery on her side, still laughing. The LeSabre was a mammoth of a vehicle, more tank than Sedan—it had more than enough space for Rebecca. Could probably house eight of her with space to spare. But Billy was another story; he had always been just plain _big_ , always equipped with more arm and leg than he knew what to do with, an attribute that made him popular with women, and equally popular with the creative insulting minds of drill instructors. Nothing ventured nothing gained, he supposed, and ducked in on top of her, the door still hanging open. Her fingers went to the buckle of his belt and he grabbed one of her wrists, forced it down beside her head. He wasn’t given to power struggles, but when it came to sex, it was important to set the tone of exactly who was in charge. It appeared she’d gotten comfortable with the idea it was her, maybe forgotten exactly who she was dealing with. Her reaction to this would gauge what was allowed, how far the line of propriety could be nudged or shoved without blowing his chances. She looked at his hand on her wrist, and that look was anything was offended. She offered her other wrist. He ignored it. She went for his belt again with her free hand; he made a grumbling sound of frustration and grabbed it. 

“You need to quit,” he said, with a note of warning.

“Or you’ll what?”

Billy just shook his head. Words weren’t working—it was time to show.

Fine.

A sharp _crack_ like the report of a rifle sounded in the distance, echoed through the trees. Rebecca jumped underneath him. Her gasp was sharp, frightened, and when Billy looked up, her attention was on the windows with fear in her eyes and trepidation in her breath. It lit a tinder fire in his belly--he immediately looked around for something to defend against, released her wrists and drew up into a more ready position.

“Did you hear that?” She asked. She took cover beneath the bulk of his body, hands drawn in towards her chest. 

“Stay here.” He ducked out the door, shut it behind him. Her head poked up halfway over the seat-rest, wide green eyes blinking in worry. 

Billy looked around—looked for colors and shapes that didn’t fit the forest, human forms, growling dogs lowered onto their haunches. Beneath the car and down the misty green expanse, the doe was once again walking, picking her way across the hillside. One of her fauns had stepped on a weak branch and scared itself into a sprawl, now sped in a clumsy trot to catch up. Billy rubbed his forehead. The door clapped shut behind him. Rocks and leaves rustled underfoot and she appeared at his side.

“Oh deer." She sounded relieved, a touch amused at her own joke. "Is everything okay?” 

“Other than you being a terrible listener, yeah.” He pulled her close, kissed her again. She raised against it, closed-mouthed and tender, hesitant to let him withdraw. Again he was the first to break it, that same familiar note of regret.

“Fucked up your makeup.” He intended it as a quip, but something heavy behind his voice pitched it quiet and low. He touched her lips with his fingers.

“Means you’re doing something right, doesn’t it?”

Fear had a way of putting a damper on proceedings. It broke up the flow, sure, but that was nothing they couldn’t get back with some focused attention. Doubt settled on his brain like a shroud—it was getting dark. This place held bad memories for both of them. The alcohol was wearing off. The way she drifted to his side, more safe out here beside him than locked behind the steel doors of a car suggested her arousal probably danced away as sure as the fauns. Billy sighed.

 _It’s not just you anymore._ An intrusive thought like a voice telling him to jump from a high ledge after peering over its side. He looked down at her, the point of her nose and the way she huddled against him, absentmindedly trusting. _It could have been, but now it’s not. And for God’s sake if you can’t take her along… just don’t hurt her._

He shook his head to physically dislodge the thought from his brain.

“Getting dark.” He pulled her close and spoke against the crown of her hair. It felt strange, like holding something expensive and stolen. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to stay here with you.” She said it simply enough, discussing a fact. If she could have reached her hand past the hard wall of his chest, grabbed him by the bony process of his sternum and shaken him, the feeling might have been the same.

“Sure we can stay together somewhere more comfortable than this. Not that I’m complaining. We can figure something out.”

“Of course,” Rebecca nodded like she was pulling herself back from somewhere far away. “We should get back on the road since the rain’s stopped.”

The atmosphere in the car was heavy, weighted down with nerves and unspoken words. Billy tapped an index finger on the wheel, willed his blood still. It didn’t work—his entire circulatory system buzzed and pounded, too much blood and not enough all at the same time.

Rebecca looked similarly nervous. Dusts of color stained her cheeks. She stared at the floorboards, brushed the same lock of hair behind an ear. Looking anywhere but at him. He reached to her and laid a hand on her thigh, a little higher than he needed to, just against the hem of her blue sundress. Her hips moved towards his hand, a twitch she tried to disguise as adjusting her sitting position. Maybe it had been just as long for her.

“Way I see it, we’ve got two choices." He said. "Straight shot through, about eight, nine more hours. Or we can stop for the night. Maybe in Cleveland. That’s about five. It’s your schedule, so it’s your call.”

For her part, Rebecca didn’t have to think about her answer, only the way to give it. Not too fast, that would sound desperate. Too slow would sound unsure. She took a quiet breath in, and was careful to even her voice. “We’ve been driving a while. You need a break, too, you know? I think stopping somewhere for the night would be good.”

Billy nodded, slowly. His thumb drew an arc just above her knee. Her skin was soft as rose petals. 

“You’re too kind,” he gave her leg a final affectionate squeeze, put his hand back on the wheel. “Break it is. You want to put some music…?”

Billy trailed off, unsure what he was seeing, at least at first. One white sneaker stretched up towards his door like she was trying to climb over him to get back outside. She settled onto his lap and his hands drifted to her waist before his brain caught up, fingers against the rough material of her denim jacket. His body knew better. He felt his brows flute up in surprise, his eyes wide open as she kissed him, captive for a brief moment of shock. 

“This is pretty comfortable,” Her face was beet red, her gestures shy and unsure. It was classic Rebecca: brave enough to start a ruckus, but once she was in the middle of one, withdrew from the dominant posture and sought assurance. She tilted her head. “What do you think?”

He _wasn’t_ thinking was the answer. At this juncture, her hands on the sides of his face, knelt over him with her knees on either side of his lap, comfort was such a far-off concept that the question went unanswered, discarded as soon as it was posed. Billy would have shoved himself into a suitcase if that’s what it took. 

Time became a strange rubber blur, stretching and snapping back into place, slowing and speeding up, entire portions clipped from its film reel under the summer heat, the languid blaze of the setting sun through the trees. Reality focused again on a strap of her dress slipping down over the graceful lines of her shoulder, her jacket gone somewhere behind them or beside them, two of the hooks on the back of her bra already unfastened and his fingers working against the last. The skin of her chest, just under the juncture of her collarbones, tasted like sweat and something sweet he couldn’t place. She had freckles here too. Maybe it was them he was tasting.

The last hook popped free and one of them yanked the garment off and flung it away. Billy wasn’t sure which. Under the shared, frenetic effort her dress became a ripple of blue cotton ringed around the slight, trim curve of her waist. He was vaguely aware that she was giggling from some far-off corner of the universe and then her hands were on the back of his head, in his hair, her chest leaned against his face and one of her nipples in his mouth. Her laughter melted into something like a sigh.

Time did its dizzy tilt-a-whirl unravel and his hand was bent underneath her at an awkward angle, exploring fingers inside elastic and cotton as she rocked a tiny stiff bundle of nerves, soft humid resistance over and against his exploring fingers; the warm, unmistakable scent of something heady and intensely female. Formless noises pealed from her throat, ended with a loud, shaking squeak. She grabbed his wrist to still him, to tell him that was enough. He was amazed at himself--apparently some skills which had rusted with time returned more readily than he gave them credit for. She didn't dismount from him to remove what he'd reached around and through—he pushed them aside instead. That seemed perfectly fine by her.

As soon as it was done, she was touching him, struggling with his belt, running her fingers down him towards the flat plane of his hips, trying to herd him towards her. Her thumb skimmed over a bead of clear, warm moisture, spread it over his skin. He tried to be tender as a first time demanded but managed only a restrained half-gentleness, unable to control that biological greed that sunk his fingers into her skin near to bruising. At one point, his seat half-leaned back and her craned over him with the shocks of the car squeaking in angular rusty protest, he grabbed her breasts with such force he accidentally pushed her back to an upright sitting position. He was sure he’d hurt her, waited for a cry of offense that didn’t come. She was somewhere far, far away, which was just as well—he wanted to remember this, wanted to lock it deep somewhere nobody could touch it, not even her. He drank in the color of her skin, the way she squeezed around him, the hunger in the arc her hips when he pushed. His brain compared the feel of her soft, small breasts under his hands against how he’d imagined this when he was alone, greedily stored these new memories for later retrieval. The curves and movements of her body demanded his eyes, but he couldn’t keep those eyes away from her face. Not for long, not from her expression that looked part like pain, part like pleading, face flushed dark pink and her short hair laid against her sweat-slicked skin in flat loops and curls. 

Even underneath her he was heavy and strong and by attrition, he overwhelmed her. Her cries were still leaving her throat as half-formed things when his body stopped taking directions from his brain. One of those film reel clips disappeared and his hand had moved to the slender curve at the back of her neck, his other arm around her waist, locking her in place against the line of his body. She clung to him for dear life. It was the first time he’d heard her curse, loud and enunciated. His voice joined hers, low and helpless against her throat.

It was over soon after that. The only sounds were the chirping of birds outside and the rough rhythm of ragged breath, both overlaid by buzzing silence. Everything trembled: his arms, the broad line of his shoulders, the sigh that spilled from his throat. Rebecca leaned down to him again and he met her partway. The humidity in their earlier kisses had dissipated, replaced with a lingering tenderness while their breaths slowed. 

Rebecca tried to talk while she pulled the straps of her dress over her shoulders, one of her nipples still glistening where his mouth and tongue and teeth had worked against it, but she could only manage a giggling expulsion of nerves, her face still pink and misted with sweat.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Billy heaved a breath and hit the latch on the side of his seat. The seat folded back, all the way down, the back of his headrest against the rear bench. He arced his back in a theatrical stretch that ended reclined, hands behind his head. _Still got it_ , the silent pride on his face seemed to say. 

“Oh, wow.” Rebecca said, still seated on his lap, upright. “Look at the windows.”

Billy did. Every available pane of glass was fogged and opaque, the forest beyond obscured. “Well, high five for being back in high school. You wanna go steady?” He held a hand aloft to her. Rebecca clapped her palm against his. 

“If you wanted to go to prom you could’ve just…” she yawned, “…asked.” She lowered, nuzzled her cheek against his chest, curled on top of him like a housecat. After a moment her eyelashes, stiffened with mascara, scratched soft against the fabric of his shirt. 

“Did you mean it?” She asked.

Billy’s brain was somewhere far from there, swimming away through the cosmos on a raft of pleasant nothing. Her question pulled him back to port. “Mean what?”

Billy’s brain raked back over what he could _remember_ saying—a whole slew of curses. He wasn’t the most articulate man the world had ever known, and sex had a way of reducing his vocabulary even further. He had told her he was about to come, of course, but it was a foregone conclusion by now that he meant that. Having your face buried against a pair of breasts while an enthusiastic partner cried out your name in the heat of the moment could make a man say some outlandish shit—it was like sucking your soul out of your body. Sometimes shreds of the truth best left buried came with it like silt being carried along the bed of a stream. He’d been talking about her—giving humid compliments, words of encouragement, and then— 

“You said I was pretty,” she said. “You know... before.”

He was confused, again. Not only had he said so—and Billy was not a man who could be accused of saying things he didn’t mean—but she had to know she was. She probably had guys tripping over their own feet stretching back a decade or so. Billy had told her before he’d seen the way her face changed when her glass-green eyes were fogged over by lust; before he saw the way her skin flushed under his touch like some kind of magic, as if it had been waiting for him. _Pretty_ didn’t cut it anymore. He thought about telling her. Though that familiar feeling no longer stayed his hands, now the words betrayed him in their refusal to move. 

He tried to deflect. “What, you think you’re not?”

She didn’t bite for the bait, and shook her head with a distant smile. “I just like hearing you say it.”

Eventually her breaths slowed in the familiar, soft rhythm of sleep. The arrogance in Billy’s expression faltered, turned into something that looked like thought. He moved his hands from behind his head to her back, and watched the emerging image of the forest while she rested. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (( Happy [very] late Valentine's Day, everyone. <3 ))


End file.
